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:
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
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The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“She isn’t harassed. She’s busy, and it’s glamorous to be busy. Indeed, the image of the on- the-go working mother is very like the glamorous image of the busy top executive. The scarcity of the working mother’s time seems like the scarcity of the top executive’s time.... The analogy between the busy working mother and the busy top executive obscures the wage gap between them at work, and their different amounts of backstage support at home.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)