The gender pay gap (also known as gender wage gap) is the difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings, according to the OECD. The European Commission defines it as the average difference between men’s and women’s hourly earnings. There is a debate to what extent this is the result of gender differences, implicit discrimination due to lifestyle choices (e.g., number of hours worked, need for maternity leave), or because of explicit discrimination.
Read more about Gender Pay Gap: Adjusted and Unadjusted Gender Pay Gap, Gender Pay Gap Over Time, Anti-discrimination Legislation
Famous quotes containing the words gender, pay and/or gap:
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)
“But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For women the wage gap sets up an infuriating Catch-22 situation. They do the housework because they earn less, and they earn less because they do the housework.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)