Confronting the pay gap problem

Matt Buttell

While reports suggest the perceived gender pay gap is closing, many barriers still remain. Now, analysts say, if we are ever to close the gap for good, female workers must have the confidence to speak out against it.

According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, last year, full-time working women in the US earned only 80 percent of what their male counterparts made. In a report released just this week, on average, women nationwide earned just $638 per week compared to $798 for men in 2008.

Nonetheless, the problem isn't as bad as it once was. Back in 1979 - when the US government first began tracking pay levels for men and women - female workers across the US only earned 62 percent of men's wages; a pay gap that had shrunk significantly by 2005 to 19 percent, when average earnings in the US for women were equal to 81 percent of men's earnings.

However, since then, the disparity has regrown a little more year-on-year, with women last year earning only 79.9 percent of men's median pay.

The reasons for the pay gap existing are multi-faceted, but one of the main contributing factors has to be the fact that if a woman wants to start a family, she is faced with a set of very tough decisions.

According to Hilary Lips, director of the Center for Gender Studies at Radford University in Virginia, the gender pay gap, which keeps women from reaching men's pay levels, exists because so many women work part-time instead of full-time after they have had a child.

And that's because working mothers often resort to reduced work schedules so they can better balance both family and work, which, argues Lips, contributes to lower levels of pay. This remains the case even if those women return to full-time work at a later stage.

Mind the gap

Reports also show that this isn't just a problem for the US.

In the UK, for instance, reports show that female doctors working in the National Health Service (NHS) are paid thousands of pounds less than their male colleagues each year. In fact, according to a new report by the British Medical Association, there is an average pay gap of of GBP£15,245 between male and female workers among the UK's 135,000 medics. And, outside of the medical profession, women nationally are earning an average of 21 percent less than men for every hour they work - either full- or part-time.

In India, a survey based on the responses of 60 of the 100 best employers in India showed that female workers held only 10 percent of senior management positions in two-thirds of the responding organizations. Not a single one of the companies had a female chief executive officer, and almost 40 percent of the respondents had only a 10 percent female workforce. What's more, the survey showed the average annual income of a woman in India is US$1,185, less than one-third of a man's US$3,698.

Meanwhile, in Australia, Sharan Burrow - president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) - warned that women in Australia now face bigger pay gaps than in countries such as Sri Lanka after the nation's rank on the World Economic Forum's global gender gap index slipped five places to 20th over the last three years.

Speak out

Industry professionals are now suggesting that, if we are to close the pay gap for good, awareness of the gender pay gap needs to be raised - thereby ensuring that more women experiencing the pay gap can talk about it openly and confidently.

After all, according to a recent report by UK-based equality firm the Fawcett Society, when a sample of people were informed that women are paid an average of 23 percent less than men for doing jobs of equal value, 94 percent agreed that the gender pay gap should be eliminated.

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