Today – 18 September – is International Equal Pay Day; a day intended to call attention to the gender pay gap and the longstanding fight to secure equal pay for work of equal value. Around the world, women are paid less for the work they do than men. The current global gender pay gap is 20%, meaning that women earn, on average, just 77 cents for every dollar paid to a man. This gap becomes even larger for women with children. In fact, research shows that not only are women penalized for having children, resulting in wage stagnation, men are routinely rewarded, seeing wage increases for each child they have.
This is a key issue on the path towards gender equality. Although women perform most of the unpaid care burden for children, men are the ones who are rewarded, while women’s career and wealth opportunities take a major hit. A gender pay gap isn’t just a day to day issue; it feeds long term inequalities in wealth. It means women earn less over their lifetimes and are likely to have a smaller pension pot when they come to retire. According to the Money and Pensions Service in the UK, the median private pension wealth of a man aged 45-54 is three times that of a woman of the same age, while for married men, it is five times the size of married women’s. Consequently, women are left vulnerable to poverty after retirement or reliant on their partners.
Is it really so much to ask to be paid the same for the same work? Although significant progress has been made in the last 50 years to close the gender pay gap, lot still needs to be done. According to the 2022 Gender Gap report, it will take another 151 years to close economic gender gaps. Much, much more needs to be done to create change for women. For a start, to help address the pay and wealth gaps, companies need to be more transparent about salaries, stop asking people their salary expectations during hiring processes, and offer more flexible working and parental leave arrangements. Governments also need to make progressive policy commitments and hold companies accountable to deliver change.