Sometimes the pay gap goes in favour of women
WHERE FEMALE WORKERS EARN MORE THAN MEN THERE ARE LESSONS TO LEARN, BUT ALL IS NOT QUITE WHAT IT SEEMS
The difference between male and female earnings has quickly become the hottest topic in employment, with the gender pay gap of BBC stars, easyJet pilots and Google engineers all in the headlines.
Laws in Britain requiring companies with more than 250 staff to publish the gap between the average woman and average man’s pay in their organization caused a furor in April.
All eyes will be on the next set of numbers to see which companies have reduced the shortfall and which are struggling to redress the balance.
It is eye catching, then, that the International Labour Organization found 15 countries where women are paid more than men, on a mean average basis, for each hour of work.
These rare nations can be found across continents and across nations rich and poor.
Argentina and Panama are the only high-income countries in the group, with women earning 2.9 per cent and 6.7 per cent more than men per hour. They are joined by fellow Latin American nations Paraguay, Ecuador and Costa Rica.
In Europe, Turkey — at 1.2 per cent — and Albania also show a similar pattern.
Jordan is also in the group, as are Egypt and Tunisia, as well as the islands of Cape Verde.
Sub-Saharan Africa is represented by Namibia, with a 6.5 per cent gap.
The biggest gap in favour of women is in the Philippines with a 10.3 per cent premium. Thailand and Bangladesh round off the 15.
These contrast starkly with most of the world. Globally the average gap in mean hourly pay is 15.6 per cent in favour of men — bigger than even the largest divide in our group of 15.
The biggest is in Bangladesh’s neighbour India at 34.5 per cent. Pakistan’s 34 per cent is next. The rich world shows a similar pattern, led by South Korea’s 32.5 per cent gap and Estonia’s 23.8 per cent.
The U.K. is next among developed economies, where men earn 23.2 per cent more per hour than women.
Given male dominance across most of the world, those 15 countries merit more scrutiny. Is the gap in favour of female workers all it seems?
Hourly incomes are important when measuring the value attributed to each worker’s output.
But when it comes to assessing the impact of pay on living standards, this only gets you so far. Monthly incomes are more important in terms of paying the bills.
On this basis only two nations break the mould. Panama, with a tiny gap in favour of women, and the Philippines with a 6.6 per cent margin.
Overall the global gender pay gap rises with men earning 20.5 per cent more per month than women.
The Philippines defies the trend through education, with women a third more likely than men to reach university.
As a result women enter well-paid careers in large numbers. The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) count of legislators, senior officials and managers finds slightly more than half are female. For professional and technical workers this hits 58.2 per cent. Laws backing equal pay help, as does a lower female unemployment rate. More women than men hold a bank account.
Yet in other countries, hourly pay gaps in favour of women are reversed when it comes to monthly pay.
One reason is that workers are unevenly distributed across high or low-paying jobs, distorting the average figure. Often relatively few women work in wage-paying jobs at all, and those who do are typically well educated.
This gives a high figure per average female worker, but should not be taken to mean that all women, or even the average woman in the population as a whole, are better off than men.
“These are mostly middle and low-income countries characterized by low labour market participation rates of women in general, and in wage employment in particular,” the ILO said.
“What the clustering indicates is that women are concentrated in specific ranges of hourly wages reflecting their ‘selective’ labour market participation. In the case of Egypt, for example, there is no representation of women at all at the extreme low end of the wage distribution. The distribution shows a cluster of more highly paid women located towards the upper end of the wage spectrum.”
In Egypt’s case women are more likely to work in the public sector, also meaning their incomes are likely to be above average.
These wages in the public sector are also symptomatic of another widespread issue in emerging markets: “formal” jobs that are measured by the authorities tend to be relatively well paid. The poorest workers are more likely to work in the “informal economy,” in self-employment, family businesses or farms that are often not counted.
This is a factor behind the lack of women in the wage statistics for countries such as Jordan, Bangladesh and Egypt, the ILO believes. Such female workers also often have less access to the training, equipment and funding available to men.
“Women comprise nearly half of the labour force in Africa’s agriculture sector, and more than half in several countries, but on the whole they produce less per hectare than men,” says a World Bank report on enterprise.
“Existing evidence from small-scale studies across the continent documents the numerous disadvantages that women face in accessing the same resources, training, markets and opportunities as men.”
Rapid changes in the workforce can also create quirks in the data that affect the average.
In Bangladesh, for example, a rapid increase in the number of young women in relatively well-paid jobs in garment factories in the capital has pushed up the average hourly wage.
This is good news in itself and hints at better developments in the future, but for now the economy still exhibits plenty of signs of historic prejudice with the lingering impact of older women having less education and fewer professional opportunities.
“If you look at the education statistics you will find girls are doing better than boys and women are graduating with better results in higher education. But then women are expected to get married, that is the beginning and end of their lives,” says Farah Kabir, ActionAid’s country director for Bangladesh.
“A lot of professional women may not come into employment, or if they do take jobs they have to sacrifice time, promotions, or they cannot move from one city to another.”
She holds out hope for the future, however, as a more educated generation enters the workforce and demands different rules and practices. “In terms of the jobs market it has to be about very dedicated skills, training, ensuring that employers encourage women to join, that they are free from violence and harassment in the workplace. Child care, women-friendly transportation and privacy and security for women are also key,” she says.
“When I look at the younger generation the demand is much stronger.”
As well as work, she adds that women only own 2 per cent of wealth in the country, in part due to the predominance of male inheritance, holding back female living standards, as well as access to funds for entrepreneurship.
This may be part of the contrasting picture in the Philippines, with its more impressive numbers on a range of gender equality statistics.
Marianna Leite, Christian Aid’s global lead for gender and inequality, notes that pre-colonial Philippines had a matrilineal society, whereby identity and property were passed down the female line. The effects may have persisted to give women a stronger position in work, politics and education.
“These indices raise awareness, and can be a good way to push countries in the right direction in terms of what lessons they can learn,” says Leite.
“What they are not supposed to do is present a ‘magic bullet’. I don’t think we have a clear answer of what is the best way to go about gender equality. It is very dependent on context and a lot of indicators.”
The WEF’s rankings of gender equality put the country eighth in the world, up two places on last year in a top 10 dominated by Nordic nations.
It scores well in education, economic opportunity and political empowerment, though less highly in the health and survival category.
This is a reminder that equality is about more than hourly wages, and that political and other forms of equality can help erode gaps in pay, in a positive cycle.
DEMAND STRONGER AMONG YOUNGER GENERATION.