Pay gap freeze around the globe -March 2012
Pay gap freeze around the globe
Solution: facilitate childrearing tasks
Frozen in Time, gender pay gap unchanged for 10 years, March 2012, is the apt title of a report covering trends in gender pay relations, since the beginning of the millenium. In search for an explanation of this big pay gap freeze across the globe, researchers from the University of Amsterdam found Wage Indicator data most helpful. Other than the aggregate data provided by national statistical offices and international public sources, the Wage Indicator data allows for a breakdown of labour market behaviour of working individuals in motivating and/or inhibiting factors.
Individual´s
motives and possibilities to participate in the labour market may and do vary
per occupation, industry, composition of the household, education, firm size
etc. Taking these variables into account researchers analyze that in most
countries child rearing is much more detrimental to women´s wages than to men´s
wages, thereby contributing to the gender pay gap. This conclusion is followed
up by the obvious implication of what might be one of the strongest factors
perpetuating the traditional gender pay gap well into the 21rst century.
The
researchers´ observe that: any
policies to facilitate childrearing tasks for both men and women will decrease
the gender pay gap.
The report ´Frozen in Time´ has been compiled for the ITUC, the International Trade Union Federation, and is published at the occasion of Women´s Day March 8.
