Gender pay gap: what it is and what are the reasons for the gender pay gap
In recent years, numerous battles have emerged attempting to assert equal rights between men and women. In fact, as impossible as it may seem, despite being in the twenty-first century, gender discrimination is on the agenda and affects many aspects of daily life. We look with pride at modern women who have managed to occupy positions of prestige, but we often forget or we take phenomena such as the gender pay gap that undermine our social affirmation.
What is the gender pay gap
With the "English expression"gender pay gap " s "indicates the difference in wages between women and men. It is sadly confirmed that, even today, many women still receive a lower salary than their male colleagues, for the same hours worked, sectors of employment and duties. In short, according to the various reports official, in 2021 women earn less and less than men.
In the "analysis of this aberrant phenomenon, two parameters are distinguished. The first is the so-called"non-adjusted pay gap", while the second consists of" "adjusted pay gap". We can translate the non-adjusted pay gap with the expression "raw gender pay gap", that is, that gap that is based only on gross hourly wages, while for "adjusted we mean the overall gender pay gap, which takes into account not only the wages, but also the female employment rate, the level of education of male and female workers, the sector of employment and the roles occupied by women in the workplace.
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The situation in Italy
The "EU Justice association has published the data to answer the question"what is the gender pay gap% in your country?", or how much the gender pay gap amounts to. This is because every year reports are drawn up at the European level on the situation of the gender pay gap and, at the moment," Italy stands out positively as regards the "raw" parameter. In fact, it has been noted that in our country the pay gap is "only" 5%. To give an example, if a man earns 2 euros, a woman will get around 1 euro and 90 cents. Of course, we would prefer that this difference be smoothed out completely, but in Europe there are much more serious cases, such as that of Estonia where this rate is around 28%.
Unfortunately, the scenario changes when we start talking about the overall gender pay gap. In fact, to determine this data we go beyond the remuneration for equal hours and duties, but also look at the purely female working sectors, the positions occupied by women, whether they are graduates or not and the number of part-time workers . Here, the wage gap rate between men and women is around 44% out of a European average of 39%. A situation that really makes you shiver.
The reasons behind the wage gap between men and women
The question may arise spontaneously: why in the middle of the second millennium do women earn less? That answer that may seem obvious, however, is not so easy to find because it sees the "union of different aspects. On the one hand, there is certainly a cultural heritage that is hard to eliminate." For years, in leadership and prestige positions, there have always been men and still today there is a tendency to prefer a man to a woman in the appointment to a promotion or to the assignment of an important position. It is an arbitrary reason that does not have no foundation and that deprives them of the opportunity to show their worth to hundreds of thousands of women.
Then, there is the difficult question of motherhood. The fact that a woman can become a mother and take a leave of absence towards the end of her pregnancy does not cease to frighten. In addition, potential workers who are already mothers have much less chance of finding a job than their childless colleagues or, in any case, they will have to settle for tasks that are not at the top of a company. Not to mention when women are put in a position to have to leave the workplace "alone" because they are loaded with shifts and overtime that do not reconcile with the management of a small child.
Such a reality seems to be science fiction, but, instead, it is what happens every day before our eyes in Italy, in the countries of the European Union and in the rest of the world. addiction to a phenomenon we have seen so often that we no longer recognize its seriousness.
Initiatives against the gender pay gap
The World Economic Forum has prepared its own report on the gender pay gap. At the moment, it appears that the pay gap between men and women will be zero in more than 200 years. In fact, if previously the estimate was around 180, with the crisis due to the pandemic the situation has worsened further.
Coronavirus aside, there have been several initiatives against the gender pay gap for some time. One of these is the "Equal Pay Day, a symbolic international day dedicated to raising awareness of the gender wage gap. In this regard, in 2019 thousands of French women had demonstrated starting from" Equal Pay Day - November 4 - showing as from then until the end of the year it would have been as if they had worked for free with respect to men's wages.
Several celebrities have also spoken out on the subject of pay differences. It may seem absurd, but the gender pay gap also affects their sector. Many of the Hollywood actresses we love and value so much earn lower pay than their male counterparts. Emma Stone, Sara Jessica Parker, Bradley Cooper himself and many others have denounced film or television production companies bringing this phenomenon to everyone's attention. Cate Blanchett, for example, took one of the most drastic decisions: she rejected a part because the film's male co-star had been offered more money.
