Gender Pay Gap : What exactly is the issue?

• The gender pay gap refers to wage disparities between men and women. Progress over the years is evident but the disparities still remain, demanding the continued need of intervention to deal with it.
• Progress of some South American and European nations in dealing with this worldwide problem has been shown in this lineplot.

Gender Pay Gap Across Industries

• Wage disparities vary across industries but the underlying pattern is constant - males earn higher than females.
• Pay equity can be focused upon if the industries with the largest gaps are identified (eg. engineering).
• However, structural and cultural constraints may be a hurdle to ‘equal pay’ in certain industries. eg. stereotypes in technology or physical demands in construction & engineering industries.

Gender Distribution in High-Paying Roles

• Men possess a larger portion of the higher paying roles in many fields, reinforcing wage disparities.
• The sample size is relatively small, risking bias but generalisation of this data would complement the overall gender ay gap.
• Achieving better gender balance in high-paying roles is crucial in closing the wage gap but this is largely linked to education.

Impact of education on the gender pay gaps

• Barring high school (casual work only), base pay increases progressively with higher educational level.
• Despite similar educational attainment across levels (ranges of boxplots), education cannot fully explain/close the gender pay gap.
• Although the higher education reduces the gap, it does not eliminate it, indicating that other factors are also influencing the pay equity.

Age-related impact on gender pay gap

• Violin plot shows the spread of base pay for each age group.
• Median earnings for men are generally higher across all age groups.
• This suggests the greater access men get to higher-paying roles.

Does business size affect the gender pay gap issue at all?

• As can be deciphered from the bar chart, the number of employees in a company does not affect the average gender pay gap.
• This highlights how deeply the problem is entrenched in the society, it extends to the small and the very large businesses at the same time, reinforcing that men are paid more either way.

Economic impact of the gender pay gap

• Accomplishing gender equity is a critical economic growth opportunity.
• As shown by European data in the line graph, closing the gender pay gap could boost the continent’s GDP by up to 5.5% in 25 years.
• If the same logic is generalised to the rest of the world, their economies could also be boosted, benefitting everyone in their respective societies.

So what should we take away from this?

References

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• European Institute for Gender Equality. (2017). Economic benefits of gender equality in the European Union: How closing the gender gap in labour market activity and pay benefits everyone. European Institute for Gender Equality. Retrieved from https://eige.europa.eu/publications/economic-benefits-gender-equality-european-union

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• World Bank. (2024). GDP of European Union. Retrieved from https://www.statisticstimes.com