Ninth Edition of ‘The Evidence’: Tackling the Gender Pay Gap
This month’s installment of The Evidence kicks off Gloria Media’s annual equal pay campaign. Starting from November 8, the average French woman effectively works for free compared to the average French man. To highlight this issue, Gloria Media will publish stories across their newsletter network sharing strategies for tackling gender pay gaps. On November 7, the campaign will host a press conference in Paris launching a report on the state of pay inequality globally.
In this edition of the newsletter, Josephine Lethbridge discusses research on structural wage gaps between male- and female-dominated professions, exploring the market’s undervaluation of job roles typically held by women (such as teaching and social work) and of unpaid reproductive labor.
Since 2015, Swedish consultancy group Lönelotsarna has published annual reports highlighting pay differences across sectors. They use a set of metrics to find jobs of equal value from different industries, ranking roles based on the skills and attributes they require.
Their findings reveal a structural wage gap between “women’s jobs” and other jobs. Those working in women-majority professions consistently receive lower pay than those in equally demanding roles in male dominated fields. For instance, midwives earn significantly less than civil engineers, despite both jobs requiring similar working conditions, responsibilities, and skill levels.
Another driver of inequality, argues economist Yana Rodgers of Rutgers University, is the lack of recognition of the labor people do outside of their waged work. Unpaid labor including cooking, washing, and looking after children – responsibilities often undertaken by women – is classed in some gender indices in the same category as leisure time.
Unequal parental leave policies for men and women, as well as the scarcity of part-time or flexible work available to working mothers, also contribute to this gender imbalance.
Taken together, these factors illustrate the difficulty in accurately measuring – and then tackling – the gender pay gap. Rodgers suggests that placing greater emphasis on the value of care will help to reduce the imbalance. For her, it is “each and every person’s responsibility to place more value on care and to demonstrate that on a day-to-day basis.”
Read this month’s full newsletter to discover what works – and what doesn’t – in policy and the workplace to close the gender pay gap. An archive of previous issues can be accessed through Social Science Space.
