Why does the gender pay gap persist?

The gender pay gap is rooted in systemic inequalities. Women, particularly migrant women, are overrepresented in the informal sector around the globe. Look around you, street vendors, domestic workers, coffee shop staff, and subsistence farmers are often women. They are in informal jobs that often fall outside the domains of labour laws, trapping them in low-paying, unsafe working environments, without social benefits. These poor conditions for women workers perpetuate the gender pay gap.

In addition to overrepresentation in vulnerable and informal employment, women do three times as much care and domestic work as men, globally. This includes household taskssuch as cooking, cleaning, fetching firewood and water, and taking care of children and the elderly. Although care work is the backbone of thriving families, communities, and economies, it remains undervalued and underrecognized. Try calculating your daily load with UN Women’s unpaid care calculator.

The motherhood penalty is another reason for the pay inequity. On average, working mothers are paid less than non-mothers, and the disparity increases as the number of children a woman has increases. Lower wages for mothers may be related to reduced working time, employment in more family-friendly jobs which tend to be lower paying, hiring and promotion decisions that penalize the careers of mothers, and a lack of programmes to support women’s return to work after time out of the labour market.

The lasting impacts of restrictive, traditional gender roles are also responsible for creating and sustaining pay inequalities. Gender stereotypes steer women away from occupations that have traditionally been dominated by men and push them toward care-focused work that is often regarded as “unskilled,” or “soft-skilled” and therefore, lower paid.

Furthermore, discriminatory hiring practices and promotion decisions that prevent women from gaining leadership roles and highly paid positions sustain the gender pay gap. “It’s not only the pay gap, there's also opportunity gap, and just being seen as an equal is a challenge,” says Abby Wambach, a sports icon and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and FIFA Women’s World Cup Champion. After retiring from football, Wambach realized that she had scored more goals than any man but got paid much less. “If you think you're treated unfairly, don't wait for the fear of rocking the boat; rock the boat,” she says.