Analysing the Gender Pay Gap in Asia and the Pacific

According to the recent estimates released by the World Economic Forum , it would take more than a century to close the gender gap in developing regions at the current pace, including #Asia and the #Pacific. In the report ‘Where Women Work in Asia and the Pacific: Implications for Policies, Equity, and Inclusive Growth ’, released by the International Labour Organization , the reason for this disparity is partly that these regions often face poor health outcomes, limited participation in leadership and decision-making positions, discrimination, and imposition of gender norms which hamper women’s full participation in the economy and society.??

Over the years, participation rates of women for the last two decades have trended downwards across the globe, including in Asia and the Pacific, which saw a decline of over five percentage points, falling from 50.4% in 2001 to 44.0% in 2021. Moreover, women’s participation has continued to be concentrated in low-value-added sectors where decent work deficits are among the highest, such as the agriculture and retail trade. In South Asia (which includes countries - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), the female participation rate is 24.1%, which is slightly more than half the global rate of 47%. The dominant participation from women in this region is concentrated in the agricultural sector which accounts for nearly 58% of all women who work there. Additionally, manufacturing accounts for almost 13% of all women employed in South Asia, with a share that has been reasonably stable over the past three decades. Moreover, the education sector – at just over six percent of all female workers – has experienced consistent growth since 1991. South Asia is the only subregion with the construction sector in their top five list for female employment, at 3.7%.?

The report added that in the top 10 sectors in terms of employment growth, only in accommodations and food services activities did more than half of the job growth accrue to women. In the Asia and Pacific regions, the sector with the most dynamic growth – IT and other information services – had only 25% of the jobs go to women. This shows how women in Asia and the Pacific have not benefited from employment growth and sectoral shifts to the same degree as men.??

In the past few decades, the labour market in Asia has undergone significant changes due to the structural transformations that have driven the region’s economic growth and facilitated the positive movement of investments, capital, and employment across a myriad of sectors. Although these transformations can have an important distributional impact on women, they can also impact overall decent work outcomes when accompanied by inclusive employment-oriented measures such as investments in skills and lifelong learning. According to the report, women have gained more substantially than men only in non-business services, and marginally gained more in manufacturing. Another important consideration regarding the female workforce is the considerably worse working conditions that are associated with sectors that are more likely to employ women. This could mean that women receive a lower share of both wage and high-skilled employment and a higher share of low-pay employment. Therefore, women are not only paid less for a given hour of work but also work fewer hours than men within a month.

One of the major reasons that women in Asia and the Pacific regions face structural issues in participating in the workforce is due to the disproportionate share of unpaid care or domestic responsibilities held by them, commonly known as the ‘motherhood employment penalty’. In the article “Burden of care work: Gender's impact on the wage gap ” published by Hindustan Times , Policy & Development Advisory Group (PDAG) members Pooja Gupta and Harshika Tripathi went over the oeuvre of Nobel Prize winning economist Claudia Goldin that points to the continuous practice of unfair burden of care work on women as the principle cause of gender pay gap. The relentless care work supplemented with inadequate support structures that can substitute their care work deters women from entering or re-entering the job market. These reasons exist in addition to women being more likely to receive fewer paid hours of work and less income.??

POLICY CONSIDERATIONS FOR EQUAL PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE?

• There is a requirement for a multi-faceted approach to design and implement measures aimed at addressing gender inequalities and promoting gender equality within the broader economic system and labour market. These policies can include gender-responsive measures such as equal pay policies and gender-sensitive social protection such as affordable and quality childcare. Moreover, these policies can include gender-responsive budgeting to ensure government expenditures are equitably distributed between men and women to overcome any gender biases in public expenditure, revenue collection and fiscal policies.?

• Improved recognition and redistribution of unpaid work can also help in restructuring the social dynamics. Still, there is merit in other more direct measures, including more flexible working arrangements and the expansion of maternity leave to include women in various employment statuses, such as the self-employed and those in informal work.??

• At the organisation level, there can be a boost for jobs-to-career transition and thus encouraging longer-term female labour force participation and higher decent work returns can be undertaken by increasing the ratio of female supervisors, investing in human resources management at the enterprise level to support female career development, and improving policies pertaining to women, such as maternity benefits.?

• At the central level, there is a requirement for policies that promote equal pay for equal work that can improve the gender wage gap. Additionally, it is beneficial for institutions to strengthen the existing labour laws and occupational safety and health protections or introduce new laws to protect women against violence and harassment in the workplace, especially in the informal sectors.??