The gender pay gap still persists around the world, and a large proportion of it is unexplained, a new report revealed.
Glassdoor Economic Research on Wednesday released a new report that examined the gender pay gap in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The report is based on more than 500,000 salaries submitted to the website.
Researchers found that before and after adding statistical controls for several factors, men still earn more than women on average across these five nations.
The unadjusted pay gap sees men in the U.S. earning 24.1 percent more than women. In the UK, the rate is 22.9 percent; in Australia it is 17.3 percent; in Germany it is 22.5 percent; while in France 14.3 percent.
But if you add controls for education, age, years of experience, industry, job location, and job titles, the pay gap in the U.S. shrinks to just 5.4 percent.
This adjusted gap is part of the difference for which Glassdoor can find no obvious explanation, other than the differences in how women and men negotiate, bias on the part of employers, or other unexplained differences.
What does this mean? It suggests that about one-third of the total pay gap has no obvious explanation.
Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for Glassdoor, said he thought that once factors such as job titles and companies were controlled, there would be nearly no gender pay gap.
He said that there is a risk that with the 5 percent pay gap, people could start to think that the problem is getting minimized.
"But I'm actually surprised it's not smaller than 5 percent," said Chamberlain. "That's pretty significant and a pretty decent chunk of change over a lifetime."
The statistics also indicate that the pay gap is not mainly caused by workplace discrimination, but by the wider distribution of women and men into professions and jobs that pay differently.
"In all countries, the majority of the gender pay gap is explained," said Chamberlain, adding that the unexplained chunk is less than half in each of the five countries part of the research. He said this does suggest that overt discrimination alone does not explain the gender pay gap today.
For some occupations, the adjusted gap is much higher than 5 percent. For dentists, computer programmers and chefs, the pay gap is 28 percent. For corporate executives and psychologists, the gap is 27 percent. Even among medical technicians and retail representatives, the pay gap is almost thrice as what it is for the general population.
The report also found that the occupations with the widest pay gaps are the ones that are highest paid -- positions such as top-level executives and physicians. Chamberlain said the high-paying fields are very male-dominated while the ones on the low end are female-dominated.
Meanwhile, Glassdoor did find areas in which women earn more than men, such as social workers, merchandisers, purchasing specialists and research assistants. The job that comes close to gender parity, researchers found, is event coordinator. This field sees a 0.2 percent difference between the salaries of women and men.
Chamberlain added that their findings point to the need for public policy solutions that address the subtle differences in gender pay gap.
Photo : Manoel Lemos | Flickr
