International Gender Pay Gaps.
This rather surprised me, the answer to this question.
In which of these countries are the hourly earnings of women closest to those of men?
A. Japan
B.France
C. Czech Republic
D. United States
Well?
France.
Hmm, you know, I’m really not sure about that at all. Very much note sure.
Among large members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, France has the lowest gender pay gap, at 12 percent. Only New Zealand, Belgium, Poland, and Greece report lower differences in the pay received by men and women.
In the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, the pay gap stands at 14, 15, and 20 percent, respectively.
In Japan, women earn 32 percent less than men, a gap far above the OECD average of 18 percent. The Czech Republic’s pay gap is 19 percent, while in the United States the figure is 22 percent.
I’m going to have to go and look those figures up. I’m reasonably certain that there’s an error of composition there. That they’re not in fact measuring th same things (for example, measuring pay by the hour or by hte week will giv very different numbers, as women tend to do fewer hours of paid work than men do).
Let me report back to you on this.
OK, a quick find on my own site. The Swedish number appears to be monthly pay, the UK to be hourly. Very different things indeed.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Funny numbers. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/ewco/2006/08/FR0608049I.htm) found France’s pay gap to be 19% in 2002. Swivel (http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/4906788?page=2) reports 13% that year, down from 14% the year prior. Swivel’s latest numbers (2005) do say 12%, though. And then, on http://www.expatica.com/fr/survival/surv_employment/filling-the-pay-gap-france-sets-a-deadline-27761.html, it’s said that the gender pay gap is higher in France than in the rest of Europe. They also say that French working women have many advantages, including subsidized daycare (although wouldn’t this be a male advantage, too???), long maternity leave, and a 35-hour work week (but again, don’t men also get this?). The website also mentions a new French law that’s attempting to accomplish a 0% gender gap by 2010, forcing companies to pay women the same as men. In the end, this website claims the gender pay gap in France is 20% in the private sector (but gives no number of the public sector).
The page refers to an estimate by Perfegal, a company working for the government to fight discrimination. Perfegal says the real French gender pay gap is 27%.
It’s all rather confusing, don’t you think? But it stands that in developed countries, women make a good bit less than men….
March 16th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
The biggest problem is that different countries measure it in different ways. In looking for a way to comparethe gap between the US and the UK I can’t get exactly the same figures. We’ve got hourly pay figures for all workers, broken down by male and female and age.
However, in the US the breakdown of hourly pay figures is only for people paid hourly. For salaried personnel no adjustment is made for the generally shorter working weeks of women.
Across other countries we get the same sorts of problems. Sweden reports its pay gap on monthly incomes, not hourly. Again, shorter working hours for women mean we’re not comparing like with like.
The truth is, we just don’t have the accurate numbers to be able to compare across countries in this manner.
I did email the originators of the above figures to ask where they got them but no repsonse after a week.