What does the data say about equal pay around the world?




Unequal pay is a stubborn and universal problem. In spite of significant progress in women’s education and higher female labour market participation rates in many countries, closing the gender pay gap has been too slow. At this pace , it will take 257 years to achieve economic gender parity.

Women workers’ average pay is generally lower than men’s in all countries and for all levels of education, and age groups. Women in male-dominated industries may earn more than those in female-dominated industries, but the gender pay gap persists across all sectors.

While gender pay gap estimates can vary substantially across regions and even within countries, higher income countries tend to have lower levels of wage inequality compared to low and middle-income countries. However, estimates of the gender pay gap understate the real extent of the issue, particularly in developing countries, because of a lack of information about informal economies, which are disproportionately made up of women workers, so the full picture is likely worse than what the available data shows us.



None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children. That’s the sobering finding of the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which reveals that gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years.
Click here to explore the International Labour Organization’s country-specific gender pay gap data.


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