Over the past year, I’ve noticed more and more people saying ‘is that even still a thing’ when referring to the pay gap. The answer is in fact it is very real and very common, in both big corporate jobs and small local businesses. There is also a common misconception that this is only present in third world countries, however, statistics show that high-income countries such as Germany, France, and the UK have some of the highest gender pay gaps globally. Could this be part of the reason for their great financial success - by manipulating legalities and paying half of the globe’s population less unjustifiably?
Germany is a developed country, with lots of global influence - its gender pay gap is amongst one of the highest ( in the top 5 highest in fact) with women earning an average of 19.2% less than a man per hour for the same job. To put this into perspective, this means that if a man earns £10 an hour a woman will earn £8.08. Doesn’t seem like much of a difference? If a man earns £2000 a month a woman will earn £1616. That's a difference of £384. Annually, a man will therefore get £24,000 but a woman will get £19,392. This is a prime example of a high-income country taking complete advantage of the gender pay gap in order for their company to get more profit. This is a similar statistic in the US, where women earn 82 cents for every dollar a man earns.
In the EU the gender pay gap is currently at a 14.1% difference. Comparative to lower-income countries, this is very high which completely defies this stereotype. Romania has one of the lowest gender pay gaps at 3.3%, so why is it one of the highest-earning groups of countries that cannot follow in their path? They certainly have the resources, funding, and means to make it equal - especially with the concord of protests that have occurred over the last century, fighting for equal pay. Why take advantage of women when there really is no reason to?
An extremely important factor to mention is the ethnic pay gap. Across London, women from different ethnic backgrounds earn around 24% less than the starting salary, before the gender pay gap is deducted as well. This means that a Black woman doing the same job as a white man in London will earn around 35% less – so if we manipulate the statistics and presume this man will earn around £50,000 per annum; the woman will earn £32,500. Unfortunately, there is still no specific law against the gender or ethnic pay gap. It has been part of UK law since the 1970 equal pay act and 2010 Equality act that all employees are entitled to equal pay, however, there are many loopholes in this, for example, because a gender pay gap is not illegal – so the law is only really set in place to make sure men who do the same jobs are paid equally. However, it is required that UK businesses with over 250 employees publish their gender pay gap data, which makes it slightly easier for women to find jobs with a smaller pay gap margin – not that they should have to.
Globally, the average gap is between 11-13%. In the UK, the gender pay gap has decreased from 17.4% in 2019 to 15.5% in 2020, which is still above the global average. It is predicted for the gap to close in 39 years – but the reason for this is unclear. Why would it be so hard to begin equal pay tomorrow? It is definitely an unjustified movement to pay women less because this will cause them to be more reliant on welfare claims and benefits, especially in elderly age, so it may perhaps end up costing the government more money than it profits them.
The gender pay gap is almost no existent the actual stats are between 1-2% the main difference is the difference in jobs, for example there are more males in higher paying roles which makes the “gender pay gap” seem to exist as big as people often see it to be