Podcast | Editor's pick of the day: Wage gap has a face and it is female

Rima M | Seetal R Iyer
Moneycontrol Contributors

On International Women's Day every year, conversations about women making it big despite being up against social, cultural and economic patriarchal structures crowd our news feeds.

Some stories are especially poignant because they erupt like blooms from the concrete cracks of politicised humanscapes. Like writer Nusrat Ali’s story in Kashmir Unheard, that tells us about Sama Beg, a certified dementia specialist from Anantnag who has started a brand of clothes and accessories named “Koshur Wear”. She now provides a livelihood to 28 employees and promotes graphic design celebrating Kashmiri proverbs rooted in a rather, yes, unheard social and cultural milieu.

Like Sama, all women represent a story that has never been heard before. And sometimes, even when it is heard, it remains unacknowledged.

On this edition of our Story of the Day on Moneycontrol, we will address the rampant inequality that exists in the way women and the work they do, are valued.

Unpaid and undervalued

In an earlier podcast, we had cited a January, 2019 PTI report published in the Hindu. The piece was based on an Oxfam report which said that unpaid work done by women across the globe amounts to a staggering $10 trillion a year, which is 43 times the annual turnover of the world’s biggest company Apple. Oxfam incidentally is part of the Fight Inequality Alliance -- a coalition of social movements, environmental groups, women’s rights groups, trade unions and NGOs.

“Inequality has a female face in India," stated Oxfam and further explained why this was so.

In India, said Oxfam, the unpaid work done by women looking after their homes and children is worth 3.1% of the country’s GDP. We quote PTI, “Women spend 312 minutes per day in urban areas and 291 minutes per day in rural areas on such unpaid care work. In comparison, men spend only 29 minutes in urban and 32 minutes in rural areas on unpaid care work.”

The report also said that women and girls are hardest hit by rising economic inequality, including in India.

Oxfam further said that   women are less likely to have paid work when compared to men, while even among the richest there are only nine women in the India’s 119-member billionaires club.

How dire is the wage gap ?

Leave alone the vast amount of unpaid work that women do, India has a poor ranking in the gender gap index. As Oxfam said, “Even the  paid work that women do brings them less earnings as compared to men due to the existing wage gap and therefore households that rely primarily on female earners tend to be poorer.” The  gender pay gap is pegged by Oxfam at 34% and  various intersections of caste, class, religion, age and sexual orientation have further implications on women inequality.

India is ranked 108th, says Oxfam in WEF’s Global Gender Gap Index of 2018, saying it was 10 notches less than in 2006 and far below the global average and behind its neighbours China and Bangladesh.

Widespread gender violence in society and  unreported instances of sexual harassment in organised and unorganised work structures further muddy the picture in the absence of functioning mechanisms  and due processes.

Societal conditioning and restrictions further impede women in rural areas and sometimes in urban areas from  undertaking paid work.

PTI quoted Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, who said and we quote again, “While corporations and the super-rich enjoy low tax bills, millions of girls are denied a decent education and women are dying for lack of maternity care.”

The point being that gender wage gap is the symptom of an ailing societal system that deprives women in various capacities at various stages of their life.

The deep roots of gender inequality

March 8, 2019 piece by Sonali Pimputkar in The Free Press Journal , cites the 2018 Monster Salary Index (MSI) survey to state that the overall pay gap between genders stands at 19 per cent.  While the median gross hourly salary for men in India in 2018 stood at Rs 242.49, for women it stood at around Rs 196.3.

We quote, “The gap widens with experience as men with 0-2 years of experience earn 7.8 per cent higher median wages than women while men with 6-10 years of experience earn 15.3 per cent more and men with 11 and more years of experience earn 25 per cent higher median wages than women.”

The piece also quotes Priti Rathi Gupta, Founder of LXME The Digital Investment platform for women and MD and Promoter at Anand Rathi Group, who says that at the end of the day, women cannot be expected to remain motivated despite bad wages and to continue contributing to the work force if things don't change.

She also says that women need to manage their money better.

She further adds and we quote, “In my 15 years of financial career, what I realised is that women in financial sectors don’t take the responsibility of their own money. Less than 1 per cent of the working women actually invest their money and that is a very sad figure compared to close to about 18 per cent of men who invest their money.”

Inequality across sections

MSI, incidentally  is an initiative by Monster India in collaboration with Paycheck.in (managed by WageIndicator Foundation) and IIM-Ahmedabad as a research partner. And according to multiple news sources, the MSI survey says that  the gender pay gap spans across key industries.

We quote, “IT/ITES services showed a sharp pay gap of 26 per cent in favour of men, while in the manufacturing sector, men earn 24 per cent more than women. Surprisingly, even in sectors like healthcare, caring services, and social work, men earn 21 per cent more than women, even as notionally these sectors are more identified with women. Financial services, banking and insurance are  the only industries where men earn just 2 per cent more.”

A Livemint report quoted Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO, Monster.com, APAC & Gulf and he said, “The narrowing of the gender pay gap by just one per cent is not just a cause for concern, but a reminder to genuinely introspect if we are doing enough. It becomes pivotal to galvanize forces across corporates and industries to work towards gender pay parity.”

The Livemint report further informs that  when Monster.com   also conducted the Women of India Inc survey aimed at understanding the working women of India and their workplace concerns,  it found that  71 per cent men and 66 per cent women feel that gender parity needs to be a top priority for their organisations.

We quote, “As high as 60 per cent of the working women felt that they are discriminated at work. The most notable form of discrimination is perception that women are less serious about work once they are married. About 46 per cent women feel that maternity leads to a perception that they will quit. About 46 per cent women also believe that there is a notion that women can't put the same number of hours as men.”

The disparity continues

Wage gap in the Indian context is not a recent discovery by statisticians as Abhishek Waghmare cited  in report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in a November 2018, Business  Standard piece.

The report stated that  women are paid the most unequally in India, compared to men, when it comes to hourly wages for labour. On average, women are paid 34 per cent less than men, the report said and added that this gap in wages, known as the gender wage gap, is the highest in India among 73 countries.

These findings were presented in the flagship publication of the ILO, the Global Wage Report 2018-19, which was released on November 26, 2018.

Business Standard has been reporting consistently on how gender pay gap increases with the average wage of enterprises: the higher the average wage, the wider the gender pay gap. The paper also reported  an existent  gap among chief executive officers that is pegged at  about 40 per cent — twice as high as the overall gender pay gap, which is about 20 per cent.

Some reasons causing the gender pay gap

An August 2018  Woman’s Web piece by HR professional Nousheen Khan attributed the gap to the fact that there are fewer women in the work force and even less   in lucrative professions and in senior/ leadership roles

Said the writer, “While doing a gender audit on company level compensation may help to keep the issue of gender pay gap in our radar, it would require a multi-dimensional effort on hiring, retention and development of women.

Gender Pay Gap may not always be a direct outcome of discrimination but it is important to understand the discrimination inherent in our society and therefore, our workplace to understand the gender pay gap. For example, there is a strong bias in the industry while hiring women who have been on a career break for childcare. There is a bias in giving challenging opportunities to women at the workplace. At times, women may also hesitate in demanding quality work, promotion or higher salary increases, and this is because the ‘second job’ of household work does not allow them space to do so.”

She states that workplaces are a microcosm of society and so the ills that plague our society will be prevalent at the workplace too.

She divides the reasons that cause wage discrimination in multiple sections like Environmental/ Cultural and  Socio-Economic Factors and Personal Choices. We quote, "The last one is heavily influenced by the first two. Most women would experience at least some, if not all of the factors mentioned above. It would also be an over-simplification to assume that these are only present in low income or underprivileged families. Many of these factors have been observed across socio-economic classes."

While her suggestions  that women must invest in self-development, upscale their skills, build support networks of mentors at work and care givers at home, are sensible, they again put the onus to break the glass ceiling on women alone.

She however concludes, “The gender pay gap is a complex phenomenon. Efforts need to be made at all levels by different institutions (Corporates, Government, NGOs etc.) and individuals to reduce the gender pay gap. We are now talking about it at least and that’s a good start.”

That we are still just talking about a disparate reality that affects and disadvantages so many women, is in our view, far from being an ideal scenario.

The undone vast

An interesting piece by Durba Ghosh and Kuwar Singh in Quartz India, mentions that behind the much awaited breakthroughs like that of flight lieutenant Avani Chaturvedi who created history by flying a MiG-21 bison solo this year, there are unheard stories of struggle. Avani is an exception who was part of the first batch of woman pilots inducted into an Indian Air Force fighter squadron in 2016, the two others being flying officers Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh.

But as the piece says and we quote, "However, feats like Chaturvedi’s aren’t what International Women’s Day, being celebrated today (March 08), is about usually. At least not going by the spate of business brunches and “girl power” merchandising that peaks around this day every year"

That brings us to the point we started this podcast piece. The unheard stories need air time too.

But we are not here to only give you the bad news and as Quartz reported , in terms of financial inclusion, over 76% of Indian women surveyed by online lending platform IndiaLends, now make their own investment decisions.

But. And we pause a bit here, 59% of those who are self-employed still depend on their spouses for financial guidance.

The major story of the day is still that the wage gap between men and women in India is staggering.

A bright spot in the MSI survey is that  more than half of the men surveyed felt they can be effective advocates for women’s issues at the workplace. However, 44% of women felt men were gender-equality allies only in private, reported Quartz.

The piece also cites a survey by Ola Mobility Institute that over 90% of women feel the country’s public transport is unsafe so going to work itself is a complex issue .

We quote, “Though gruesome incidents of violence against women have received attention in mainstream media, this data suggests that most women may face harassment such as verbal abuse, staring, groping, catcalls, whistling, molestation, which needs to be addressed to improve their perception of safety.”

Quartz reports that the Ola Mobility Institute took into account views of 24,023 respondents across 11 cities such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Hyderabad, Indore, Jammu, Kochi, Mumbai, Mysuru, and New Delhi, for this survey. Women constituted 41% of the respondents.

The final word

An interview with producer and film-maker Soundarya Rajinikanth by Anupama Ramakrishna  in Deccan Herald sums up the aftertaste of the MSI report.  We leave you with this quote by Soundarya, "Gender equality is when access to opportunities and opinions, regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making is provided to all the genders. It still isn’t a fair world yet… some industries and some individuals, I can say, have started considering men and women equal. But it’s not the case all over. I sincerely hope this changes in the coming days."