More Women in Employment & Pay Gap Widens

Rephrasing Jane Austen's first sentence in Pride and Prejudice, it is universally acknowledged that men are paid more than women.

The gender pay gap, is the difference between the average gross hourly earnings of men and women, including bonuses and overtime as well as other perks, all expressed as a percentage of the average gross of the yearly earnings of men.

On the 19th of November the Times of Malta published an article stating that there are more women than ever before in full-time employment, filling job positions which used to be filled by men but somehow, from 19th November till the end of 2018, Maltese women will be working for free marking the pay gap that still exists between men and women. Therefore, for the most part women will be doing the same jobs as men but at no cost for a little less than a month and a half.

A number of people close their eyes to this issue and wish to believe that the existence of the gender pay gap is a myth and in their minds it all boils down to the choices that women make. Even though a number people choose to not believe in the gender pay gap, many statistics show that the effects of gender pay gap today will have long term consequences, mainly one where by the age of retirement, a third of all women will fall under the poverty line when compared to men.

Given that women also tend to spend more years in retirement due to longer life expectancy, the consequences of the gender pay gap can have a long-lasting impact on their ability to live a decent life. Dr Farrugia 

Since 1997, the pay gap began narrowing however in recent years it has remained steady. In 1997 the universal pay gap was around 17.4% where as now it is steady at 9.4% however that is still not enough. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2017, the gap will not be closed for at least another 217 years.

Going through a number of articles on the gender pay gap, many common reasons have come up as to why there still exists this financial equality between men and women.

The main reasons is clearly seen in the fact that in the UK 41% of women take part-time jobs when compared to a measly 12% of men

Another reason for the pay gap is the type of occupation that women have compared to men. Women generally occupy, secretarial, caring, leisure, service, sales and customer service occupations whereas men are found to occupy more commonly managerial, technical and mechanical occupations. Therefore women are automatically occupying lower salary paying jobs compared to men.

The final common reason for the pay gap is having and caring for children. In full-time employment women above the ages of 35 and 40 take time off work or sometimes leave their jobs in order to have and then raise children. In part-time jobs women take time off for the latter reasons at younger ages of those between 20-29. American Economist Claudia Golden has explained that the existence of the gender pay gap for childcare reasons comes from the fact that women's priorities change and so what they want from their jobs changes as well. Women who are willing to return to work look for flexible hours, or the option to work from home or even work on projects without a tight schedule or longterm deadlines.

Sarah Carabott lists some solutions towards the end of her article in the Times of Malta as to how we can start reducing the pay gap including:

• Greater female representation at company decision-making levels, with clear pathways for career progression.

• Men need to take on their share of caring responsibilities and be empowered to become more involved in parenting. A great start would be for family leave to be extended and equally shared.

• Flexible work conditions is key, so that parenting obligations can be met without having a negative and unequal effect on career progression (Sarah Carabott)

By following a few of the above tips and more, we can start working on having more women go to work while giving them equal opportunities to their male counterparts. At present men can live a single life comfortably all through retirement, while women most likely have to depend on a spouse or fall under the poverty line, in a month it is 2019 and this issue has to stop being looked at as a myth and be understood as a problem.

(Analysed from Carabott. S, (2018, November 19), 'Gender pay gap increasing alongside increase in female employment'. The Times of Malta. Retrieved from https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20181119/local/gender-pay-gap-increasing-alongside-increase-in-female-employment.694634)

Kristina Marie Parker