persuasive speech about gender pay gap

All the Arguments You Need: To Convince People Who Think the Gender Pay Gap Isn’t a Thing

Even if you’re only rewarded 62% for your efforts.

In our All The Arguments You Need series, we take on mindsets standing in the way of progress and rebut them with facts and logic.

Recent reports of Abhishek Bachchan denying that pay inequality is a problem — or even a thing — in Bollywood have been doing the rounds. “There’s a huge debate on gender parity in the film business and in other industries. I’ve worked in nine films with my wife and in eight of those, she’s got paid more than I have. The highest-paid actor in  Piku  was Deepika (Padukone),” he said , in a conversation with filmmaker Shoojit Sircar at a recent event. “It’s a business, and if you are a saleable actor, you get paid accordingly. You can’t be a new actress and demand to be paid the same as Shah Rukh Khan.”

These are tired old arguments and conflations that get trotted out whenever equal pay is discussed — and they’re dangerous because, on the surface, they sound so reasonable . But they’re not — they can and should be refuted. The next time you’re at a dinner party (or in the comments section of an Abhishek Bachchan interview) here’s what you can say.

“I know a woman in the same field and role as me, and she gets paid more than me/men I know.”

Good for her; she’s probably had to work twice as hard as a man to earn it. But one personal anecdote doesn’t change the fact that this woman is an anomaly. How many other women in the same field and role out-earn their male peers? How many earn at par to their male peers? Equal pay is not about the single woman at the top; it’s about the majority of women in the workforce who earn roughly Rs. 62 for every Rs. 100  (in India) earned by their male peers.

“The highest-paid person in my field is a woman.”

Again, good for her. There will always be outliers in any situation. Who are the next highest-paid people? And the next highest-paid people after that? You’ll probably see a disproportionate number of men in those groups.

Take, for example, Bachchan’s point that Deepika Padukone was the highest-paid actor in  Piku ; the question is not whether the lead actor in a movie is paid more than the rest of the cast — that seems like an obvious yes; the question is whether Padukone in Piku  was paid at an equal rate — either outright, or in terms of percent of production cost — to Ayushmann Khurrana in, say, Shubh Mangal Savdhan.  Or whether Swara Bhaskar in  Veere Di Wedding  was paid comparably to Farhan Akhtar in  Rock On!!

“People get paid what they’re worth; if they bring in more revenue/value, they get paid more.”

The gender pay gap is well-documented across the world; therefore, this argument implies that the vast majority of women everywhere aren’t working hard or aren’t competent enough to bring in the same revenue or value to their employers as their male peers. This is just insulting.

This argument gets tossed around a lot in industries that have more nebulous, fame- and/or performance-based pay structures, like cinema and sports. For example, a common argument against equal prize money in sports is that men’s sports and male athletes attract many more viewers and, thus, generate more revenue — therefore male athletes deserve higher pay than female athletes.

This argument also appears with the variation: But the male field is just so much more competitive/interesting than the female field. Answer: First, women are still doing the same job. The fact that you find the level of play among male athletes to be more sophisticated doesn’t mean women aren’t performing equitably. The world has been conditioned to value men’s athletic prowess more than women’s, even at the top-most levels; viewership and resulting revenue, as well as perceived depth of competition, can’t be attributed to the male athletes themselves, but to a social value for masculine physical fitness.

Even assuming the female field is less competitive, that’s an argument in favor of equal pay, not against; equal pay would allow female athletes to afford the same resources — coaching, facilities, equipment, etc — that male athletes access, thus improving their play.

“People will get discouraged if we start paying everyone the same amount, because merit and performance won’t be rewarded.”

Equal pay isn’t about rewarding non-performers; it’s about rewarding people who perform at the same levels with the same compensation. To argue that pay parity will reward non-performance is necessarily to say that you don’t believe women perform at the same level as men.

“Women don’t perform at the same level of men, so they can’t be expected to be paid the same yet.”

This is a red herring; equal pay is about equal recompense for comparable performance. And every day, far more women perform at the same level as men, than under- or over-perform compared to men. These women are not getting fairly recompensed.

This argument is typically trotted out in the contexts of sports; female athletes can’t perform at the level of male athletes, therefore their performance is deserving of less prize money. Again, this confuses issue. A female athletes job is not to outperform/win against a male athlete, just as a male athlete’s job is not to outperform/win against a female athlete. Her job is to win against her competitor, just as his is to win against his competitor. They are performing the same job — yet average prize money and salaries for female athletes are vastly lower than those for male athletes.

This argument is also used in fields that aren’t divided by biology. For instance, there is nothing, biologically speaking, that would prohibit women from becoming top chefs, or chess masters; yet, few to none of the world’s culinary leaders or chess masters are women — hence, they simply don’t perform at the same level as men. But that is a simplistic conclusion; for all of fine dining’s, or chess’s, history, women have been discouraged from pursuit. Men, on the other hand, have been taught these fields are appropriate for them to pursue, taught to find value in achievement therein, and have built and funded systems to facilitate the development of more men within these industries. Women are just beginning to be accepted in these fields and avail of institutional support; the fact that women’s representation among the upper echelons of these professions is much less is not evidence of women’s sub-par performance, but of their nascent access to these professions.

Which ultimately means this argument promulgates a larger problem: a societal view that male performance is the ideal that women must live up to. Because of this mindset, skills that appear both valuable to employers and more common among women — teamwork, credit-sharing — have historically gone undervalued.

Finally, there is every indication that women often outperform men even on male-centered metrics of success; in one study , female leaders outscored male leaders across the board, but by the widest margin in taking initiative and driving for results — two traits considered stereotypically ‘male.’ Yet the gender pay gap persists, and often widens, at the level of leadership.

“Men have families to support, so they need a higher paycheck.”

This promotes the backward assumption that men should be breadwinners and women should be caretakers. It also further perpetuates an unequal bar for merit-based recompense. Why does fatherhood deserve a bigger pay check, while motherhood has been proven, time and again, to inhibit women’s earnings ?

Finally, in case no one has noticed, people are not paid according to how much they “need” the money.

“Women choose lower-paying jobs, so they can work less or have more flexible hours.”

Equal pay isn’t about comparing industries against each other. It’s about comparing commensurate roles within industries. The question isn’t whether a female teacher (a low-paying field dominated by women) is making as much as an investment banker (a high-paying field dominated by men). The question is whether a female teacher with the same experience and role, is making as much as a male teacher; whether a female investment banker with the same experience and role, is making as much as her male peers in investment banking.

We’ll leave aside the societal problems — like a lack of equal parental leave — that force women into making decisions that sacrifice pay and career advancement for the ability to care for their families.

“Women are bad negotiators. Men are just better at negotiating their salary.”

Salary negotiation is an option in very few industries, at very few levels — generally the top levels, which women struggle to access to begin with. Therefore women’s negotiating skills (if they are really sub-par) aren’t responsible for a gender pay gap that spans fields and levels.

Finally, even if the ability to negotiate a salary was more widespread, why should women, who bear the brunt of a flawed and unequal system, be held responsible for fixing it? Businesses are responsible for what they choose to pay their employees, full stop. They either choose to value the equal work of employees equally, regardless of gender and negotiating skills, or they don’t. They don’t — and that is exactly what needs to change.

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How to Attack the Gender Wage Gap? Speak Up

By Jessica Bennett

• Dec. 15, 2012

ANNIE HOULE, grandmother of seven, holds up a stack of pink dollar bills.

“How many of you know about the wage gap?” she asks a roomful of undergraduates, almost all of them women, at the College of Mount St. Vincent in the Bronx.

A few hands go up.

“Now, how many of you worry about being able to afford New York City when you graduate?”

The room laughs. That’s a given.

Ms. Houle is the national director of a group called the WAGE Project , which aims to close the gender pay gap. She explains that her dollar bills represent the amounts that women will make relative to men, on average, once they enter the work force.

Line them up next to a real dollar, and the difference is stark: 77 cents for white women; 69 cents for black women. The final dollar — so small that it can fit in a coin purse, represents 57 cents, for Latina women. On a campus that is two-thirds women, many have heard these numbers before. Yet holding them up next to one another is sobering.

“I’m posting this to Facebook,” one woman says.

One of three male students in the room is heading to the photocopier to make copies for his mother.

Another woman in the group sees a triple threat. “This is crazy,” Dominique Remy, a senior studying communications, says, holding the pink cutouts in her hand. “What if I’m all of them? My mother is Latina. My father is Haitian. I’m a woman.”

I’ve come to this workshop amazed that it exists — and wishing that there had been a version of it when I was in school.

I grew up in the Girl Power moment of the 1980s, outpacing my male peers in school and taking on extracurricular activities by the dozen. I soared through high school and was accepted to the college of my choice. And yet, when I landed in the workplace, it seemed that I’d had a particularly rosy view.

When I was hired as a reporter at Newsweek, I took the first salary number that was offered; I felt lucky to be getting a job at all.

But a few years in, by virtue of much office whispering and a few pointed questions, I realized that the men around me were making more than I was, and more than many of my female colleagues. Despite a landmark sex discrimination lawsuit filed against the magazine in 1970, which paved the way for women there and at other publications to become writers, we still had a long way to go, it turned out.

When I tried to figure out why my salary was comparatively lower, it occurred to me: couldn’t I have simply asked for more? The problem was that I was terrified at the prospect. When I finally mustered up the nerve, I made my pitch clumsily, my voice shaking and my face beet red. I brought along a printed list of my accomplishments, yet I couldn’t help but feel boastful saying them out loud. While waiting to hear whether I would get the raise (I did), I agonized over whether I should have asked at all.

This fear of asking is a problem for many women: we are great advocates for others, but paralyzed when it comes to doing it for ourselves.

BACK at the Bronx workshop, Ms. Houle flips on a projector and introduces Tina and Ted, two fictional graduates whose profiles match what’s typical of the latest data. Tina and Ted graduated from the same university, with the same degree. They work the same number of hours, in the same type of job. And yet, as they start their first jobs, Ted is making $4,000 more than Tina. In the second year, the difference has added up to almost $9,500. Why?

“Maybe he just talked up his work more,” one woman, a marketing major, suggests.

“Maybe he was mentored by other men,” another says.

“Or maybe,” chimes in a third, a nursing student, “she didn’t know that she could negotiate.”

Bingo. Over the next three hours, these women are going to learn how to do it — and to do it well.

There has clearly been much progress since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, mandating that men and women be paid equally for equal work. Yet nearly 50 years later, if you look at the data, progress toward that goal has stalled.

Of course, not all statistics are created equal. Some account for education and life choices like childbearing; some don’t. But if you sift through the data, the reality is still clear: the gender gap persists — and it persists for young, ambitious, childless women, too.

In October, the American Association of University Women — co-sponsor of the Mount St. Vincent program — offered a report called “Graduating to a Pay Gap,” in which it determined that in their first year out of college, women working full time earned just 82 percent of what their male peers did, on average. Again, women’s choices — college major, occupation, hours at work — could account for some of this. Even so, the A.A.U.W. determined that one-third of the gap remained unexplained.

For years, legislators and women’s advocates have been seeking solutions. In many ways, the wage gap is a complicated problem tied to culture, tradition and politics. But one part of it can be traced to a simple fact: many women just don’t negotiate, or are penalized if they do. In fact, they are one-quarter as likely as men to do so, according to statistics from Carnegie Mellon University. So rather than wax academic about the issue, couldn’t we simply teach women some negotiation skills?

Ms. Houle, along with Evelyn Murphy, the WAGE Project president and a former Massachusetts lieutenant governor, aims to do just that. For almost seven years, Ms. Houle has been training facilitators around the country and introducing their program into schools. (WAGE stands for “women aim to get even.”)

Now, working in conjunction with the A.A.U.W., they plan to have negotiation workshops — called Start Smart — in place by spring in more than 300 colleges and universities nationwide. Nearly 30 colleges have already signed up for three-year commitments.

Several other organizations have also begun working with schools, Girl Scout programs and Y.W.C.A.’s to coach women before they enter the work force.

At Smith College, the Center for Work and Life recently began a program called Leadership for Rebels that teaches young women assertive communication skills, through role-playing and workshops. At Carnegie Mellon, the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management will start its first Negotiation Academy for Women next month, led by the economist Linda Babcock . She is also the founder of a program called “Progress” that aims to teach similar skills to 7- to 12-year-old girls.

“I do think that people are really starting to take this idea seriously,” says Professor Babcock, a co-author of “Women Don’t Ask.” “I think they’re starting to understand that we have to train the next generation of women when they’re young.”

At Mount St. Vincent, the Draft 1  workshop is broken into sections: understanding the wage gap, learning one’s worth on the market, and practical negotiation, in which students use role-playing in job-offer situations.

Women learn never to name a salary figure first, and to provide a range, not a number, if they’re pressed about it. They are coached not to offer up a figure from their last job, unless explicitly asked. The use of terms like “initial offer” — it’s not final! — is pounded into them. And, perhaps most important, they learn never, ever, to say yes to an offer immediately.

“I can’t tell you how many times I hear stories of women who go into a negotiation saying, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much, I’ll take it!’” says Ms. Houle, noting that one student she coached even hugged her boss. “Here these women are, more educated than ever, incurring incredible debt to get that education, and they’re going to take whatever they’re offered. It’s like, ‘No, no, no!’ “

Many reasons exist for women’s fears about asking for higher pay.

There’s the fear of being turned down. (“I think we take rejection personally,” Ms. Murphy says.) There’s the economy. (If you negotiate in a tough market, might the offer be rescinded?) There’s the fact that women, in general, are less likely to take risks — a business asset in the long run, but one that can make advocating for themselves tricky. There’s also the reality that many women have internalized the idea that asking is somehow not ladylike.

“Girls and women intuit that speaking up can be dangerous to your reputation — that asking for too much can be viewed as conceited or cocky,” says Rachel Simmons, co-founder of the Girls Leadership Institute and a creator of the Leadership for Rebels program at Smith. “This may begin on the playground, but it extends all the way into the workplace.”

Research by the Harvard senior lecturer Hanna Riley Bowles and others has found that women who negotiate are considered pushy and less likable — and, in some cases, less likely to be offered jobs as a result.

That’s why women’s approach to negotiation is crucial. In one study, from Professor Babcock at Carnegie Mellon, men and women asked for raises using identical scripts. People liked the men’s style. But the women were branded as aggressive — unless they gave a smile while they asked, or appeared warm and friendly. In other words, they conformed to feminine stereotypes.

“The data shows that men are able to negotiate for themselves without facing any negative consequences, but when women negotiate, people often like them less and want to work with them less,” says Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, whose forthcoming book “Lean In” is about women and leadership. “Even if women haven’t studied this or seen this data, they often implicitly understand this, so they hold back.”

So, it’s a balancing act. Ask, but ask nicely. Demand, but with a smile. It’s not fair — yet understanding these dynamics can be the key to overcoming them, Ms. Sandberg says.

The good news is that all of these things can be learned. In 2003, when Professor Babcock was conducting research for her book, she surveyed Carnegie Mellon graduates of the management school, determining that 13 percent of women had negotiated the salaries in the jobs they’d accepted, versus 52 percent of men. Four years later, after a lengthy book tour and talking relentlessly about these issues on campus, she found that the numbers had flipped: 68 percent of women negotiated, versus 65 percent of men.

Ms. Simmons put it this way: “This is about muscles that need to be developed. This is about practice.”

AND practice they will, one workshop at a time.

At the session at Mount St. Vincent, the women researched median wages and practiced speaking clearly and warmly. They tried to remember the three T’s: tone (be positive but persuasive), tactics (never name a salary figure first) and tips (sell yourself, but anticipate objections; don’t get too personal, but be personal enough).

“It was nerve-racking,” said Ria Grant, a nursing student.

“I stuttered,” recalled Danielle Heumegni, a sociology major.

And yet they felt good.

“I realized there’s a way to sell myself without feeling uncomfortable,” Dominique Remy said.

“You won’t get anything if you don’t at least try,” said Erika Pichardo.

“This,” Ms. Heumegni said, waving her set of pink dollar bills in the air, “was my aha! moment.”

An article last Sunday about programs that help women learn to negotiate for better pay misstated the name of one such workshop. It is Start Smart, not Smart Start.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected] . Learn more

Jessica Bennett is the executive editor of Tumblr.

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How to Counter Nine Arguments About The Gender Pay Gap

Tuesday, April 4 is Equal Pay Day, a day which symbolizes how far into the current year women must work in order to make the same amount of income that men made last year. As special attention is given to the gender wage gap today, you may hear many frustrating arguments about the pay gap that exists between men and women. In order to help navigate these arguments, the following is a guide debunking some of the most common erroneous assumptions about Equal Pay Day and the gender wage gap.

This year's Equal Pay Day demonstrates that, on average, in order to make the same salary as men made the previous year, women must work 44 days into the following year. This reflects an overall wage disparity of American women making, on average, 79 cents for every dollar that the average American man makes . Equal Pay Day is designed to draw attention to this disparity as well as to inspire others to take concrete action to remedy the issue.

However, while this day is meant as one of collective action and advocacy, it is also often punctuated with arguments from skeptics about why unequal pay is not discriminatory or why it exists in the first place. These arguments are certainly frustrating to encounter, particularly on a day meant to highlight inequitable treatment, and thus it is helpful to have counterpoints ready in case you do encounter them, today and everyday.

1. Women Don't Negotiate Their Pay

Some argue that the gender wage gap exists simply because women supposedly do not negotiate their salaries as well or as frequently as men. According to The Guardian, this notion is patently inaccurate. Women recognize the importance of negotiation and do indeed negotiate for higher salaries — they are just less likely to receive them , which is evidence of pay discrimination.

Furthermore, women actually run a much higher risk than men of being socially or professionally penalized for negotiating for more income. According to MONEY reporting on a Harvard Business Review article, "In repeated studies, the social cost of negotiating for higher pay has been found to be greater for women than it is for men... Ask your boss for more money and risk being seen as ungrateful and pushy; don't ask for more and you'll be paid less for the rest of your career."

Thus, discrimination in negotiation practices constitutes evidence of the equal pay gap and why it exists — and not an argument against it.

2. Women "Choose" Lower-Paying Jobs

Those who question the discriminatory component of the gender wage gap often say that women simply choose lower-paying jobs, which is why the gap exists. In fact, quite the opposite of this notion is true. Evidence demonstrates that when women choose jobs, the pay tends to decrease . This is demonstrated both in the average salaries for female-dominated professions as well as in overall sector salary decreases when more women choose to enter a profession that was previously dominated by men.

A sociology study cited in The Guardian was enlightening in regard to this issue and noted, "...When women enter an occupation in large numbers, that job begins to pay less , even after controlling for a range of factors like skill, race and geography... [Furthermore], their analysis found...that a higher proportion of women in an occupation leads to lower pay because of the discounting of work performed by women."

Thus, sadly, jobs that women choose often end up paying them less simply because of their gender, not because they chose a profession that was inherently low-paying.

3. Women Leave The Workforce To Have Children

Another oft-cited argument regarding the gender pay gap is that women voluntarily leave the workforce to have children and then are simply paid less because they have been out of the workforce for years and are resultantly less experienced.

However, this argument is again inaccurate for a variety of reasons. According to a study done by The Guardian, sex discrimination still constitutes the biggest reason behind the gender pay gap, even after taking into account factors like "age, tenure, time out of the workforce, occupation, industry, part-time work and sector." Furthermore, women are seemingly penalized for having children once they do return to work.

According to the Telegraph, women can earn up to a third less than men when they return to work after childbirth, while men actually earn up to 6 percent more after having a child, according to Business Insider.

Thus, a woman temporarily exiting the workforce to care for her children does not account for the gender pay gap.

4. Men Work Harder Than Women

While this seems like a ridiculous argument to have to debunk in 2017, unfortunately arguments regarding the wage gap sometimes do reflect the (erroneous) belief that men work harder than women and therefore should be paid more. According to MONEY , critics often say that men "put in more hours, don't take as much time off, and don't leave temporarily to have children." However, these statements are sweeping generalizations and are also inaccurate.

According to the New York Times, it is actually women who do more at work, but simply benefit less from it in terms of recognition. The article cited several studies that found that women are more likely to stay late at work as well as to engage in "office housework," or administrative tasks that are helpful but do not "pay off," professionally-speaking. According to the article, " women help more [at work] but benefit less from it." Furthermore, when women return home in the evenings, they are also still largely responsible for household tasks , limiting their options to continue their professional work into evening hours.

Thus, the notion that women not working as hard as men contributes to the gender pay gap constitutes a highly inaccurate argument that does not reflect reality.

5. Women Are Less Educated Than Men

Another argument seeking to debunk the discrimination aspect of the gender wage gap is the notion that men are supposedly more highly educated than women. In fact, reality reflects quite the opposite. According to MONEY , in the United States, women are actually more highly educated than men and are graduating from college and graduate school at a higher rate.

However, frustratingly, women's educational degrees are seemingly worth less than men's. MONEY cited a study from Georgetown University that showed that "men with some college but no degree earn about the same as women with a Bachelor’s degree ...and that women have to have a Ph.D. to make as much as men with a B.A."

Thus, the gender pay gap exists because women's education and experience is valued much less than men's—not because women are less qualified than men.

6. Women Are Not Primary Wage Earners

Critics of the gender wage gap sometimes assert that women are not primary wage earners in their households and that gender disparities in pay reflect this notion. However, this is, again, misguided criticism for many reasons. First, according to FiveThirtyEight, among heterosexual married American couples, almost 40 percent of women are the primary breadwinners . Furthermore, according to the New York Times, more than 75 percent of single mothers are the sole breadwinner for their household.

Beyond the fact that women are now financially contributing to their households more than ever before, the primary wage earner argument also does not hold up simply because it should not excuse disparities in pay for equal work.

If men and women are working the same job for the same amount of hours, they should paid equally, regardless of whether or not they are the primary breadwinners in their households.

7. Women Engage In More Part-Time Work

Another argument that seeks to diminish the significance of the gender pay gap is the notion that women engage in more part time work and therefore earn less than men. However, according to The Guardian, the issue of part-time versus full-time work is having increasingly less impact on the gender wage gap.

In 2016, The Guardian measured the impact of part-time work on the wage gap and found that its impact had declined from 14 to only 4 percent , mostly because of more flexible telework options and the emergence of more higher paying part-time jobs overall.

Moreover, the newspaper also pointed out that responsibilities that women are still expected to disproportionately fulfill at home (like chores and childcare) often contribute to their decision to engage in part-time work, calling into question whether not working full-time actually reflects a choice women make or an expectation for their roles in society and their households.

8. Equal Pay Requirements Are Unjust Or Anti-Capitalist

Critics of equal pay legislation have also argued that making equal pay legally mandatory amounts to what they believe is "socialism" and does not allow space for merit-based pay. Indeed, in 2015 Donald Trump echoed this sentiment, saying, "If you start getting involved with government on ‘this one gets this pay and this one gets that pay,’ and then you say — ‘Where does it all start?’ ...if you sort of say, ‘everybody gets equal pay,’ you get away from the whole American Dream. You get away from capitalism in a sense."

Of course, believing that equal pay for equal work equates to socialism and inhibits merit-based pay is essentially implying that women are inherently worse at their jobs than men, otherwise the gender pay gap would be closed. This is obviously completely untrue, for all of the reasons described above.

Furthermore, saying that equal pay legislation is anti-capitalistic implies a complete lack of belief in the existence of a discriminatory gender pay gap, which has been repeatedly confirmed through many studies and analyses .

9. The Wage Gap Is Inaccurate Or Doesn't Exist

Finally, many critics also argue that the gender wage gap does not reflect reality and cannot take into account all of the factors that might contribute to a disparity in pay between men and women. However, beyond just calculating an average gender wage gap, many "like-for-like" studies have been conducted comparing male and female compensation in the same roles and ultimately demonstrate that women are paid less. Furthermore, the aforementioned Guardian study also demonstrated that even when taking into account a myriad of factors that could affect the wage gap, such as time off, industry, part-time vs. full time work, etc, it was still found that the primary cause for the gender wage disparity was sex discrimination.

Overall, there exists a variety of evidence to debunk some of the most common arguments people use to discredit the gender pay gap. Hopefully Equal Pay Day can serve as an opportunity to educate people about the inaccuracy of these arguments and help garner even more support for wage equality.

Equal pay for work of equal value

Worldwide, women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. As a result, there’s a lifetime of income inequality between men and women and more women are retiring into poverty.

This stubborn inequality in the average wages between men and women persists in all countries and across all sectors, because women’s work is under-valued and women tend to be concentrated in different jobs than men. Even though the work itself may require equal or more effort and skills, it’s valued and remunerated less. For women of colour, immigrant women and mothers, the gap widens. The so-called “motherhood penalty” pushes women into informal economy, casual and part-time work, and tends to be larger in developing countries than in developed countries.

Join the campaign for equal pay

Join #StopTheRobbery campaign by UN Women to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. Globally, women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, effectively being “robbed”. Visit 23percentrobbery.com to spread the word and help stop the biggest robbery in history.

Take five: At the current rate of progress, no equal pay until 2069

Across the world, women still get paid 23 per cent less than men. Chidi King, Director of the Equality Department of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the main international trade union organization representing the interests of working people worldwide, and a member of UN Women and ILO’s Equal Pay Champions initiative, unpacks the issue.

What actions are needed to bridge the gender pay gap?

Closing the gender pay gap requires a package of measures, central to which is decent work. 

One of the most effective and quickest ways to narrow gender pay gaps is through minimum living wages (or wage floors) and universal social protection. Minimum living wages benefit all low paid workers. Since women are starkly overrepresented in low paid work, it would usually benefit women more dramatically. Germany, for example, recently introduced a national minimum wage to tackle its stubborn gender wage gap of 22.4 per cent. This needs to be backed up by universal social protection... Read the full interview to learn what drives gender pay gap, who’s impacted and more»

Other voices:

Take Five: “Managing a company is about managing talents, there’s no place for discrimination” 

Askar Baitassov, Chief Executive Officer of Kazakhstan’s AB Restaurants chain talks about why the company champions gender equality. AB Restaurants is the first company in Central Asia to sign on to the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a joint initiative of UN Women and the UN Global Compact, which places gender equality at the heart of good business practices. Read more»

Take five: “Women now represent 50 per cent of the company’s board members”

Mustafa Seçkin, Vice-President, Unilever N. Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus talks about how the Women’s Empowerment Principles have shaped and improved work place culture and performance at Univeler Turkey. Read more»

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This is why you should care about the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap – while it looks like just a number on a page, it means so much more in reality. Ahead of Equal Pay Day this year, it is important that we take a step back and really look at what the gender pay gap means for you, your family, your workplace and Australia.

What is the gender pay gap in Australia?

At the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (‘WGEA’), we calculate several gender pay gaps. For example:

Why are there different gender pay gap numbers?

There are different sources of data and there are different ways to calculate it – these factors result in different but equally relevant gender pay gap figures.

The main differences between the national gender pay gap and the WGEA total remuneration gender pay gap are:

What is important to note is that regardless of what measure you use, there is a gender pay gap in favour of men. In fact, gender pay gaps in favour of men are a common feature of economies worldwide.  You can see that both the national gender pay gap and the WGEA gender pay gap are vital to providing the whole picture in Australia.

But wait… what does it all mean?

The gender pay gap is commonly misunderstood to be two people being paid differently for the same work or work of the same value. This is not the gender pay gap, this is equal pay – something that is unlawful in Australia.

It is a measure of the difference between the average earnings of women and men in the entire Australian workforce.   

The gender pay gap is a symbol of women’s position in the workforce in comparison to men.

It is the result of different social and economic factors that have a tremendous impact on how women and men live their lives.

Discrimination and bias are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the causes of the gender pay gap.

To start with, there has been a historic and systemic undervaluing of women’s work. Often, female-dominated industries and jobs attract lower wages. This form of segregation prevails today and women continue to be slugged with an enduring undervaluation of female-dominate jobs whilst competing with barriers to attaining male-dominated jobs.

Women take on a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work. Entrenched societal expectations, economic issues and enduring stereotypes steer women and men into the boxes of ‘carer’ and ‘breadwinner’, with little freedom to ‘choose’. Limited access to flexible work and paid parental leave, particularly for men, mean that women spend a greater amount of time out of the workforce, have a higher rate of part-time work and report experiencing high levels of work-family conflict. Men on the other hand, often miss the opportunity to enjoy better work-life balance and to fully realise their role as a carer for their children.

Men dominate senior leadership roles. Only 17.1% of CEOs are women, 25.8% of board members and 30% of key management positions. The leadership pipeline remains leaky as women’s caring responsibilities can interrupt career progression and opportunities, in addition to unconscious and conscious bias towards female leadership.

The gender pay gap does not just impact a woman once in her life. It has a compounding effect that results in a woman’s reduced earning capacity over her lifetime.

On average, women are less likely to progress as far as men in their career and accumulate less money for retirement.

Women are more likely to spend their lives working, and caring for the home and loved ones. They are more likely to retire in poverty.

The key takeaway:

The gender pay gap is more than just a number. It is an important symbol of inequality, for women and men.

This is why the gap matters.