“Inequalities of access” to the best-paid and maternity positions are two major factors of this persistence of pay deviations.
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Compensation gaps between women and men are resorbed, but at a very slow pace. In 2019, the “average wage income” of the first was 22.3% lower than the second, a decrease of only 5.1 points in a quarter of a century, according to a published study, Thursday, March 3, by INSEE. The tendency to decrease has accelerated a little “on recent years”, without sending the gap between the two halves of the population.
Some of the difference is that women work a little less than men: they are “three times more often” than them part-time and “do (…) less overtime”. A situation very largely attributable to the weight of family life, which is based on their shoulders: they invest more in the domestic tasks and the education of children, “even if, between the mid-1980s and 2010”, disparities of this type have reduced itself thanks to the change of behavior of the spouses.
INSEE’s investigation delivers a factor that has a strong impact in female careers: the birth of a child. Five years after such an event, the mothers employed in the private sector have “less than about 25% wage income from what would have occurred without this arrival”: the dropout results from “arbitrations”, such as Interruption of activity or a part-time passage, to adapt to new constraints. Fathers, “are not affected”.
But these parameters do not explain, to them alone, the preferential treatment of men benefit from their payroll. If we reason with equivalent hourly volumes for both categories, there is slightly greater than 16%.
Retirement Impacts
The root cause of the phenomenon is in “inequalities of access” to the best paid positions. Women accounted for 70% of employees and 57% of the intermediate occupations in 2019. This concentration is obvious in the “service trades” (home helpers, servants, maintenance officers) “and care” (caregivers) , nurses, midwives) – two fields of the economy where the payroll does not fly high.
In parallel, the framework functions, they are occupied, in nearly six in ten cases, by men. Even more, chained INSEE, “accessing the 5% of the highest paid jobs is twice as likely” for women than for their male colleagues. An illustration of the glass ceiling to which they face to access the highest responsibilities in a business or administration.
But, even taking into account these data, “there remains an unexclained portion” in the observed gap, “which can be a reflection of a professional segregation,” says INSEE. Thus, in 2017, there was a difference of 5.3% on average between women and men engaged in “comparable” conditions in the private sector.
These dissimilarities in careers have repercussions on retirement. If we are interested in the generation born in 1950, it turns out that women have requested the payment of their pension to 60.8 years on average, one year more than men. This is due to the fact that their journey in the world of work has been more chopped, forcing them to maintain up to an advanced age to avoid a discount on the amount attributed by old age insurance.
The fate of women is also less enviable for money perceived during their old days. In 2019, their retirement averaged 1,272 euros, including the survivor’s pension, or 24% less than men.