In my country due to deep rooted backward societal beliefs and practices as well as stereotypes against women, there is still a gender gap. However, the government has recognized the right of women to get equal pay for equal work in plenty of legislations. Now the situation is changing and women are getting equal payment for the same job. There are also special rights given to women workers, such as the right to maternity leave, equal assess to different opportunities and the like. Even if the gap still exists, I believe women are benefiting from these rights. However, there is still a hostile working and living environment fro women. Plenty of women face sexual harassment and gender-based violence in their work places.

Here another article about the current situation in Australia. It has nice graphics and up-to-date information

"The gender pay gap was higher than it was two decades ago, despite moves to address the issue and more women now attaining tertiary qualifications than men"

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-women-earn-less-retire-with-less-20151105-gkreze.html

Well said Clarissa.

But sometimes in Nigeria, male/female inequality or gender gap is not always the problem. There are a lot of male/male disparities too. For example, male doctors earn more than their counterparts on the same cadre in the civil service. This is a problem that has generated series of protests. Also during the yearly national service undertaken by fresh university graduates, young doctors (male or female) earn more than other Corp members. There is hardly any fairness and justice. The explanation has always been that doctors spend more years in the university than others. So does that suggest that other courses are less important?

I‘m aware that a Labour Act exists at the moment to regulate the work environment, but how well enforced the policies have been is unknown. The disparity has long been in existence. But it is one area that we are working with other CSOs to really focus on

Well said Clarissa.

But sometimes in Nigeria, male/female inequality or gender gap is not always the problem. There are a lot of male/male disparities too. For example, male doctors earn more than their counterparts on the same cadre in the civil service. This is a problem that has generated series of protests. Also during the yearly national service undertaken by fresh university graduates, young doctors (male or female) earn more than other Corp members. There is hardly any fairness and justice. The explanation has always been that doctors spend more years in the university than others. So does that suggest that other courses are less important?

I‘m aware that a Labour Act exists at the moment to regulate the work environment, but how well enforced the policies have been is unknown. The disparity has long been in existence. But it is one area that we are working with other CSOs to really focus on

Equal pay means both men and women in the same workplace are given equal pay for their equal work. The jobs need not to be identical but they must be substantially equal. The pay gaps vary between men and women in different groups such as age, education and employment type whether permanent,temporary or casual. In Kenya, I see Salaries and Renumeration Commission headed by a woman,is in charge of setting salaries rates of different public sector employees.

According to the world economic forum Mexico is the 13th largest economy in the world but is only rank at the 58th position in the global competitive index. Whereas we all know women represent half of the human capital available in any country, Mexico is rank as the 89th in the global gender gap index segregating the participation of women in the following areas 

• health
• education
• economy
• politics

Regardless the educational and health gap are almost closed, representing just 1% of difference between men and women, all the other areas are still way apart where  53% is the economic gap, and 14% as the political representation gap. 

Nonetheless women are still earning less than men and not filling high skill positions in the market, where obviously they are needed to develop the country. 

I have found some statistics in a report about women in the market place generated by the Ministry of Education in Peru. It seems the gender gap is around 33% in terms of salaries in 2012. Based on these data I am afraid that similar scenario is happening on the rest of latin countries. Any latin members that could share some data and statistics here?

The link of the study is here (unfortunately in Spanish), please also find below a short summary  : http://www.mintra.gob.pe/archivos/file/DISEL/2012/INFORMES/informe_anual_mujer_mercado_laboral_2012.pdf

"Este estudio tiene como objetivo identificar los avances en la reducción de las brechas de género  en  relación  a  la  formación  del  capital  humano,  al  acceso    equitativo  de  las oportunidades económicas y en el acceso al mercado laboral. El  estudio  se  encuentra  dividido  en  seis  secciones. En  la  primera sección, se presenta el panorama económico y laboral a nivel internacional, así como las desigualdades de género. En la segunda sección se analiza la situación de la mujer en el mercado de trabajo peruano a través de los principales indicadores laborales. . En la tercera sección se muestra las principales características del empleo femenino y en la cuarta sección, la formación del capital humano femenino.En la quinta  sección se muestran las diferenciales de ingresos
entre   hombres   y   mujeres,   así   como   sus   características   atribuibles   a   esta diferenciación.  La  sexta  sección muestra  las  características  del  desempleo  e   inactividad femenina"

I strong agree with everyone here.  Mostly in the informal sector is where women are not valued much and they lack well formulated policies to guide them on how to remunerate women. I thought it is good to share with you the following site about Empowering Women, Tackling Income Inequality http://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2015/10/22/empowering-women-tackling-income-inequality/?hootPostID=43b99112d08dd855cce705e5dbdfb86b

Hi Clarissa, thanks for this insightful subject, I find everybody's contribution quite enlightening. I must confess I already have a paradigm shift.

There are policies in Nigeria that regulate work environment but as usual, policy implementation has been poor. Like Bisi Haruna said, government institutions (civil service) in Nigeria are regulated by a gender friendly "Civil Service Rules and Regulation", hence there is equal pay for the same job. However there are pay differences among institutions within the Federal Civil Service due to difference in mandate and business model. For example, two people might be on the same Grade Level in different agencies of the Civil Service, yet be paid differently.

The private sector on the other hand, is somewhat guilty of gender inequality in terms of employment opportunity and compensation (heightened by the introduction of 'performance-based-pay system' in some organizations). Possibly because there is no institution taking responsibility for regulation, implementation and enforcement. I know organizations that do not employ women for reasons such as pregnancy and associated conditions, inability to work over-time, etc. Although there are improvement as regards equal pay in the private sector but it is still at a snail speed. I think awareness and advocacy can be intensified to accelerate equal pay across board.

In Uganda, cases of unequal pay manifest in the private sector. All the job interviews I have had with NGOs have required me to state how much I expect to be paid. This becomes quite tricky if you don't have inside information to help you not ask for so much and not so little. The public sector on the other hand has a standard salary scale and this makes it even for both men and women.

As Ana said we need to change women and men minds , there is no way to reduce the gender gap if we do not work together. To that I would also like to add that this corporate world has lots of greedy people as CEOs than they may take advantage of this situation (women being submissive and feeling under skilled) and just abuse employers. I think what we also need is a change in our economical views. Nowadays everything turns around consumerism and make the "economy grow", no matter what. People are seen as a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs, a commodity, and we have lost sense of respect for human lives.

Hi Clarissa, 

And thanks all for sharing this interesting data. 

I found some interesting numbers in this field as Tazeen said in US the gap is around 20% but it does vary within every state and due to the ethnicity of every women, making the gap between Asian women and men just 10% whereas Hispanic and Latin American women are paid just 54% of their men peers. 

This gender gap also gets worst as the level of education is higher, meaning that probably while in the C-suite a women with a doctorate is earning 79% of their males counterparts, in contrast to a 76% of the earning between men and women with just a high school degree. 

I believe that despite the efforts if the government and some corporations there's still a lot to do, specially changing women mindset about asking for risings and speak up at work, it is know that in the majority of corporation women always take jobs for less money and in some cases we tend to ask for a rise less likely than men. I think we need to start informing our women to make this change but also to empower men and women to help,those how are not speaking up their voices to really receive what they must. 

I am a Nigerian and in Nigeria, men and women have equal pay. And women get to enjoy a 3 months maternity leave in the public service. Nursing mothers are also allowed to come to work with their babies during the 6 months exclusive breast feeding period.

However the situation is completely different in the private sector. Some HR Professionals will not employ women in certain positions and when there do, it is under the condition that she can not get pregnant within the first 3 years of the job. Although this situation is no longer as rampant as in the previous years, it still occurs randomly.

 

I did some research. In Italy, the average female employee earns 5.8% less than the average male employee, which is a considerably smaller gender pay gap than the overall EU-27 average of 16.2%. However, since 2006 the gender pay gap in Italy has continuously increased. This negative trend is contrary to the EU-wide tendency of a decreasing gender pay gap. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the rather low labour market participation of women to some extent distorts the picture of the gender pay gap, as data on highly educated and thus, highly paid women can skew the statistic towards a more positive picture than is overall the case. More info here (in the library too).

Thanks Mary for sharing what is happening in Kenya, it seems to be a constant problem in different countries that the policies are hard to implement. I wonder if everything is up to us no, as conscious citizens, workers, bosses.

Hi clarissa and thanks for bringing this in the lime light, yes its an issue of importance given that women are working so hard to make it even going further to study more and get more knowledge, this is still not given the attention necessary in opinion  given that in my country workers still rely on the workers unions to look in to implementation of policies that touch on their issues as workers, the policies are their but no clear framework on how to implement these policies in my country our parliament assed an employment act lets believe some of these issues will now be addressed with this Act.
 

In 2009, I was not applying for a work but i was applying for an internship in Sweden (yeah! Sweden! the most pro gender equality place in the world), and my boss asked me if I had a boyfriend and if I was planning on having children. Since I didn't have a boyfriend and I was too young to have any children ( I was 21 years old) I just replied no to all questions. Due to my unexperience I did not realised how abusive where those questions, now I take a stand and say strongly that those are questions that do not have anything to do with the interview. The biggest problem here is that most of countries do not have SHARED leave, in Scandinavia you and your partner can choose how many months each would be taking care of the baby within a year. In countries like these employees will know that both men and women will have to go on leave at some point, hence there will be no room for questions about having children or not. Now, it is also important that after these laws are implemented, the idiosincrasy of the whole country promotes that is socially aceptted that men take paternity leave and stay at home. Laws and culture have to go together towards the same goal.

Because I have only been working for 4 years, so I was not sure if women and men have equal pay in most of the fields. But I have noticed a lot of discrimination against women. I noticed some HR require marital status on job applications, so if a woman has not have baby yet, it will lower her chance to get hired. Firstly firm doesn't want to pay a Hugh maternity leave, secondly, firm is worried about if they hired this lady but after she gets married or have a baby, she needs sacrifice her career for family(but that would be costy for a firm's time and money to train her).

For the listed reasons above, single women sometimes have to step down to where she belongs and with lower pay rate, to find a job.

In Nepal, women and men are paid unequally for the same job. For example women menial workers are paid 30% less than their male counterparts. Though this is a violation of the Labour Act 1992, nothing substantial has been done yet to tackle this discrimination. There is no practice of auditing company policies from this perspective yet.

Thank you Clarissa for bringing this up. I am a Ugandan living in Sweden and it is the same problem in both contexts. Sweden has however tried to come up with policies to ensure that there is equal pay. Right now the differences only manifest because of differences in professions. Women and men can be at the same level professionally, but differences do happen in payment due to the types of jobs they do.

Dear Tazeen, could you please copy and paste the link again? I get an error message when I want to open it. By any chance do you have online the stats for how the unequal pay is in Latinamerica? As far as I have asked some friends no one knows if they earn less than their male counterparts.

In the U.S., women earn only 77 to 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. These statistics are even worse for African American and Hispanic American women. I've read numerous studies and reports indicating the deep biases that both men and women continue to hold against female employees, despite their levels of education, and despite resumes/CVs identical to men's. I posted a link to an article about women in tech in another thread, but I think it applies here as well. It discusses why women in STEM-related fields are prone to leaving those fields, and the inequalities that women endure simply because of their gender. These gender biases are still very real and very pervasive, unfortunately. Here's a link to the full article: https://medium.com/@racheltho/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996