Closing the gender pay gap is more important than ever |

While individual characteristics such as education, working hours, occupational segregation, skills or experience partially explain the gender pay gap, ILO says the majority is due to gender or gender discrimination.

Building on the UN’s commitment to combating all forms of discrimination, including against women and girls, Equal Pay Day represents a multi-year effort to achieve equal pay for work of equal value.

Women were the hardest hit

Meanwhile, women are among the hardest hit by COVID-19 pandemic, including in terms of income security, representation in the hardest-hit sectors, and gender-based sharing of family responsibilities.

This, in turn, has negatively affected their employment and jeopardized decades of progress towards gender equality.

As countries emerge from the pandemic, taking action to address gaps in gender equality is not only relevant and timely, but also critical to an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable recovery.

Closing the gap

Governments, employers and workers’ organizations recognize that closing the gender pay gap is more important than ever.

Over the past few years, a growing number of governments have been proposing transparency and information sharing measures to close the gender pay gap.

Depending on how they are implemented, pay transparency measures can be effective in capturing pay disparities and reducing broader gender inequalities in the labor market, according to a recent study.

“It’s still early days for wage transparency” said Manuela Tomei, Director of the ILO’s Working Conditions and Equality Department, notes that countries are taking different approaches to promoting it.

She noted that “there is no one-size-fits-all solution.”

“Although more time is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of different measures and practices, it is encouraging that governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations are keen to develop innovative solutions, such as pay transparency, to address a persistent problem.”