Women face lot many biases in the workplace- they are paid 20 percent less than men, they are under-represented in decision-making roles, and carry out at least 2.5 times more unpaid work than men says an eye-opening report by International Labour (ILO) Organization.
The various individual characteristics including education, working time, occupational segregation, skills, or experience may be few of the reasons for the gender pay gap, but discrimination based on one’s gender or sex is primarily responsible for it.
The Corona pandemic has adversely affected women in terms of income security, representation in sectors hardest hit, and gendered division of family responsibilities.
This has wider ramifications that not only threaten their employment but also lead to reversing the progress made toward gender equality in the past decades.
It is imperative that for an inclusive, sustainable, and resilient recovery the issue of gender equality setbacks is addressed which is the need of the hour.
There is now a wider acceptance and recognition among the governments, employers, and workers that addressing the issue of gender pay gaps is more important at the present time than ever.
In the last few years to address the gender wage gaps, more governments are adopting methods to bring transparency and information sharing to fight the issue.
Recent research highlights that in practical terms, depending on how they are put into place, this issue could be successfully addressed. The pay transparency measures can effectively identify compensation differences and also it could help in reducing the gender inequalities in the labor market.
“These are still early days for pay transparency,” said Manuela Tomei, Director of the ILO Conditions of Work and Equality Department, noting that countries are pursuing different approaches to advance it.
She pointed out that “there is no ‘one-size fits all’ solution”.
“While more time is needed to assess the effectiveness of the different measures and practices, it is encouraging that Governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations seek to devise innovative solutions, such as pay transparency, to tackle a stubborn problem”.
Some of the most important challenges which women face are that they mostly work in lower-paid, lower-skill work, and there is pay inequality; they earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. In the decision-making roles, women are mostly underrepresented and carry out at least 2.5 times more unpaid work than men. According to an estimate if we continue to move at the same pace it will take 257 years to close the global gender pay gap.
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