Gender Pay Gap: Men and women earn so differently

Gender Pay Gap
Men and women earn so differently

The unadjusted gender pay gap was one percentage point lower in 2020 than in 2019

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In the past year, too, women in Germany earned less than men. These are the reasons for the gender pay gap.

In the past year, women earned 18 percent less than men in this country. The difference in earnings, the unadjusted gender pay gap, is one percentage point lower than in 2019. This was announced by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on the occasion of Equal Pay Day on March 10, 2021. With this result, it should be noted that special effects resulting from short-time working in the Corona crisis may have influenced the change in the unadjusted gender pay gap.

According to Destatis, women in Germany in 2020 earned an average of EUR 18.62 gross per hour, EUR 4.16 less than men (EUR 22.78). In 2019, the difference was 4.28 euros. As before, the gender pay gap in eastern Germany, at 6 percent, is much smaller than in western Germany (20 percent).

These are the causes

Investigations into causal factors of the gender pay gap are possible every four years on the basis of the structure of earnings survey; the last results are from 2018. Since the factors are subject to long-term change processes, the causes are likely to have largely persisted in 2020 as well. According to this, 71 percent of the difference in earnings between men and women can be explained by structural factors – "among other things, due to the fact that women more often work in industries and professions in which they are less paid and they are less likely to reach management positions".

In addition, according to Destatis, women work more often part-time and in mini-jobs and therefore earn less per hour on average. In 2019, almost every second employed woman (47 percent) between the ages of 20 and 64 worked part-time in Germany. Among the men, this proportion was only 9 percent.

The remaining 29 percent of the earnings gap would correspond to the adjusted gender pay gap. According to this, women employees earned on average 6 percent less per hour than men in 2018, even assuming comparable work and equivalent qualifications. It should be assumed, however, "that the differences would be smaller if further information on wage-relevant influencing factors were available for the analyzes, especially information on career interruptions.

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