Around the world, in the last few decades, the workplace has now seen an inflow of women entering the labour force. In 2020, it is common to expect any workplace to include both men and women in employees. However, the entrance into the workforce has not been without hurdles – since then, organizations and corporations are still grappling with ways to make offices safe for all regardless of gender. One such obstacle that stands in the way for many women is the gender wage gap.
To get to the bottom of the existence of this phenomenon in Pakistan, the first step is to examine the wage gap itself. Here’s what the term represents: a difference in average income. Calculating it is simple – you take the average amount that men earn in the workforce, and you compare it with the average amount that women make in the workforce. In most countries around the world, this ratio is skewed towards one side – typically, men tend to earn more than women.
It is important to note that this is not a measure of individual earnings. In essence, this is an average over an entire population that has entered the workforce, so each person’s personalized experience can be affected by several factors. For example, a female executive working in a successful business will probably earn more in a year than a male Uber driver. The wage gap does not mean every single man in the workforce makes more than women; it merely means that on average, and they earn more than their female counterparts.
Let’s come back to Pakistan, and the wage gap in place in the country. Contrary to popular belief, it is universally understood that not only is the wage gap genuine, but it also has a significant role in maintaining systems where women earn less and lack the opportunities they need to access to have financial freedom and independence.
In 2019, the World Bank released a comprehensive report on wage inequalities across the globe. In this report, it was indicated that not only is the wage gap a genuine issue in Pakistan, but it is also the highest across the world. On average, according to this report, men earned 34% more than women, which is almost twice as much as the global average, estimated at around 20%. And the fact that this is the average means this is not all, there are many other factors, such as age, ethnicity, access to opportunities, socioeconomic status, etc. which can impact how much money people can earn on average.
An interesting angle to consider when talking about the wage gap is that more of the men and women working in Pakistan are working in the informal sector; meaning that they are working in jobs that are not defined very elaborately in the law as workplaces. This can include farms, factories, small scale home businesses, and more. This directly impacts how wage is defined in Pakistan – in such jobs it is less likely for people to get access to traditional ‘promotions’ and it is more than likely than neither the men nor the women are making minimum wage. As a result, in most parts of Pakistan, homes rely on a dual income structure, where both men and women act as breadwinners of the family, yet most of the power is still concentrated with the men.
The fact of the matter is, there is no one reason for the wage gap between existing between men and women in society. Instead, there is often a myriad of factors, rooted deeply in a sociological phenomenon which impacts how men and women earn.
At the very crux of the matter, the wage gap exists because of the different kinds of choices and opportunities available (or not available) to men and women, which impact how favourably employers see them as good hiring options. A lot of these choices are deeply rooted in societal norms. For example, men often have access to finances and the educational opportunities allowing them to achieve higher education. This, in turn, provides them with the qualifications to pursue professional careers and earn more money. It is not that women are not able to study or do not want to; society decides for them and pushes them to stay in the home. Even if they were to consider higher education, especially in Pakistan, they would be pushed to marry soon out of university and discouraged from following through to their career.
Marriage proves to be a significant factor in this wage gap – employers see married women – especially those that can still have children, as a major risk. And this is all tied to the fact that employers know they will have to provide them with an extended leave should they ever get pregnant. And so, many employers concerned only with the accounts of their business, decide not to hire women who are in the age bracket that can still have children as they see it as a loss. There is no reason to think women who will have children will not be beneficial and productive members of the company.
Another factor that impacts how men and women earn is that men are conditioned to ask for more money upfront when asked for a range for their salary. Women are more likely to ask for less, and this can be tied to their social upbringing at the kind of anxieties they face, the imposter syndromes they can feel like they embody, and the way they are told they don’t belong to the workforce. Men can also often put in more work hours than women, who are either held back by societal expectations or placed under restrictions and curfews by their families. These factors give men far more opportunity to work more, get access to training and pay-raises, earn promotions, and eventually make more money than women, even at the same company.
The wage gap is essential for many reasons, and at the top of the list is the fact that it is, by its very nature, an act of discrimination. All people, regardless of their gender, deserve to access and earn equal and meaningful pay, enough to sustain their livelihoods and responsibilities. In Pakistan, a large number of women are working in the informal sector, and many of them are responsible for the sole breadwinning in the family. As such, a gender wage gap of about 30% can make a monumental impact on the quality of life for every single person in the family.
The gender wage gap is also a source of insurmountable loss. The total wage loss that women in Pakistan experience can be tracked down to a cumulative amount of 500 billion Pakistani rupees, with most of the injuries occurring in the informal sector. This is a huge loss, one that could have had severe benefits to the population who deserves to earn it. Even though the segment of women working to become the breadwinners of the family are looking to push past societal expectations and break the glass ceiling, they are still being held down by the chains of the wage gap. In contrast, their male counterparts push through and move ahead.
The gender wage gap may be considered a figment of the liberal imagination. Still, the truth of the matter is, it is a genuine phenomenon that impacts the everyday lives of most women in the country, and only ever for the worse.
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