International Equal Pay Day: Closing the Gender Pay Gap

Bonjour, Happy Minds. If I asked you to imagine what our world might look like in another 300 years, you would probably dream up some pretty wild visions of the future. You might imagine the human race has advanced to the point that we look like neanderthals by comparison. Flying cars, hoverboards. Or perhaps you envision a world where humans have vanished altogether, replaced by Artificial Intelligence. 

What you would be unlikely to imagine is that we might finally have achieved gender equality and closed the gender pay gap. Yet, according to a 2022 report by UN women, that’s about how long it’s going to take if we maintain our current rate of progress – about 286 years, to be precise. That is if we haven’t been overthrown by a highly sophisticated race of cats by then (seriously, who’s keeping an eye on them?)

So, as we approach International Equal Pay Day on September 18th, it’s an opportunity to look at where we’re at, reflect on how far we still have to go, and see if maybe we can lock this thing down before, say, the next ice age.

The Reality of Global Gender Equality

The group EPIC (Equal Pay International Coalition) is working towards the goal of equal pay by 2030, but realistically it seems that true global gender equality is still a long way off. About three centuries, give or take. It’s a tough pill to swallow when we see so much progress being made every day in making our world fairer and more inclusive, but the numbers tell a different story. 

For example, according to a 2022 report by UN Woman, women only hold two out of every ten jobs in science, engineering and information and communication industries. Women comprise approximately 35% of STEM students at university level and only 3% of information and communication technology studies. For every three management or supervisor roles, women are likely to occupy less than one. Women represent just 16.5% of inventors with a patent, 42% of judicial positions, 26.5% of parliamentary seats and only 16% of the police force. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

Backwards or Forwards? The Global Picture

In some parts of the world, we’re not just stuck—we’re going backward. While some countries are progressing, albeit far too slowly, some countries are actively regressing women’s access to education and healthcare. Since the global goals were signed in 2015, a third of countries have not made any measurable progress towards gender equality, while some countries have actively declined. Lack of protection against forced child marriage in South Sudan, Niger and Chad means that many young girls do not have the option to continue education or freedom to control their reproductive system, and approximately 12 million girls under the age of 18 are married each year globally. Afghanistan has seen nearly 20 years of women’s rights scrapped since the Taliban reclaimed the region, and women are currently banned from attending secondary school or university there. 

Even the recognised global leaders in gender equality (Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Germany, Nicuaragua, Namibia and Lithuania) have only managed to level about 80% of their gender pay gap. Progress, yes, but painfully slow. As it currently stands on a global level, for every $1 earned by a man their female counterparts can expect to earn just 77 cents.

A Lesson from Children: Unequal Pay is Unfair

Perhaps some of you will remember this viral video from a few years ago brought to us by the Norwegian trade union. It featured school kids completing a simple task and being rewarded with sweets. Male and female children were paired together and asked to close their eyes once the job was finished. When they opened their eyes they were faced with the fact that the male workers had been rewarded with approximately ⅓ more sweets than the females. Of course the children were appalled by the obvious unfairness, and ended up sharing the sweets between themselves, not before delivering a few choice soundbites. The video ends with the message ‘unequal pay is unacceptable in the eyes of children, why should we accept this as adults?’ 

It’s a powerful reminder that, at its base level, gender equality and equal pay is a simple issue of fairness which we should be able to take for granted in 2024, and certainly long before 2324. 

Why Equality Matters More Than Ever

But it goes beyond that. Our species faces unique challenges on multiple fronts, from climate change to population growth to energy, food and water scarcity. We simply can’t afford to suppress half the population for the next 300 years. If we are to have the best possible chance of rising to these challenges, then we’re going to need the ideas and viewpoints of every single person. We need an educated and empowered population of thinkers, dreamers and doers who are given the opportunities and tools to make the most of their potential. And while we’re at it, let’s assign someone to keep an eye on those cats, eh? Just in case…