Gender Pay Gap: These are the consequences of unequal pay

Equal Pay Day
These are the consequences of unequal pay between men and women

By now everyone should have realized that the gender pay gap in this country is currently around 18 percent. But what very few people know: That with this 18 percent Germany is actually quite embarrassing, quite far behind and quite alone – in comparison to almost all EU countries! The EU Commission has been regularly publishing gender pay gap statistics for all its member states for just over 15 years. And for just as long, Germany has consistently occupied the bottom five places. For several years in a row we were even among the “Flop 3”, right next to Austria and Switzerland.

Employed and self-employed women are massively disadvantaged

By the way, this doesn’t just apply to employees: female-led start-ups in this country only receive a fraction of the money compared to what male-led start-ups receive in financial injections: the so-called gender investment Gap or capital-gender gap reveals that Female-led start-ups receive an average of nine times (!) less money as male teams. Women of color then receive 20 times less capital.

How much more difficult it is for female companies was also beautifully observed during Corona: The Federal Statistical Office calculated that 63 percent of all self-employed women lost income during the pandemic, compared to 47 percent of self-employed men, and that women’s businesses increased 56 percent were affected by temporary closures, but only 35 percent of men-run companies.

Shouldn’t this gender injustice have been countered with special financial injections? You would have, yes. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite happened: According to the University of Fulda, 73 percent of the first Corona economic aid flowed into male-dominated sectors and only 4.2 percent into female-dominated business sectors. I just don’t have any more words to say.

The gender lifetime earnings gap is 62 percent

The gender pay gap is not even the worst factor that women can encounter today: at some point it will add up to an even uglier gender pension gap of currently up to 49 percent. Which means nothing other than that Women currently receive, on average, around half of their pension, compared to men. Which ultimately results in the equally ugly Gender Lifetime Earnings Gap, i.e. what a woman will have earned in lifetime income compared to her partner at the end of her life. This gap is currently up to 45 percent in this country. But only if there are no children there. Anyone who is currently in their mid-30s, lives in West Germany and is a mother will have earned an average of around 580,000 euros gross over the course of their life. For the male counterpart, a father in his mid-30s, it will be an average of 1.5 million euros. Which means a gender lifetime earnings gap of a whopping 62 percent for mothers. And that means a difference of almost a million euros. Cool.

If someone’s ears are ringing and the question arises as to how we can get out of this misery, there are various answers: Apart from the fact that we need women’s quotas, stricter pay transparency laws and more incentives for fathers on parental leave, we finally have to stop To use the gender pay gap as the most important indicator of equality. Scientists also advocate putting more focus on the gender pension gap or the gender lifetime earnings gap instead. In order to make it clear that women do not earn 18 percent less at the end of their lives, but rather have lost half as much, are compared to their male partner. And that this should certainly not be a desirable future, neither for our daughters nor for our sons.

Would you like a second helping?

Women are more likely to die if operated on by a man rather than a woman; Inflation caused prices for women’s clothing to rise higher than for men’s… Alexandra Zykunov provides further hair-tearing facts in “What else do you want?!”. (304 pages, 16 euros, Ullstein)

Bridget