ILO Report on Wage Disparity in India

Ignoring a serious problem or pretending that it does not exist will not make it go away.

The International Labour Organization drove home this uncomfortable truth once again with data from its Global Wage Report for 2016-17. The findings are neither unexpected nor new, but they certainly are appalling - in the fourth consecutive year of declining global wage growth, women continue to be overworked and underpaid all over the world.

India had among the worst levels of gender wage disparity — men earning more than women in similar jobs — with the gap exceeding 30 per cent.

Women also constitute 63 per cent of the lowest paid Indians, and a meagre 15 per cent of the highest earning ones.

Among the major economies studied in the report, only South Korea surpasses India in terms of the hourly wage gap (37%). Apart from Dadra and Nagar Haveli and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, men in India earn more than women everywhere.

Reasons for above trends:

Delving into the reasons for the wage gap, the report noted that typically, women’s educational choices produced occupational segregation. For instance, since the majority of those who studied nursing were women, “this profession is over-represented among women”.

At the same time, care work is undervalued because it may be seen as a natural female attribute rather than a skill to be acquired. Thus, a higher representation of women in sectors where their work is undervalued results in a gender pay gap.

Analysis of above reasoning:

Education alone can’t be blamed: It is easy to attribute the plight of Indian women to a lack of access to education, which sabotages their chances at getting well-paying jobs. However, data from the 2011 Census show that this is not entirely true: between 2001 and 2011, there was a sharp spike in women earning post-graduate, technical and professional degrees. The truth is that, even among educated workers, women continue to bear the brunt of exploitation and discrimination.

‘Women’s Work’: Moreover, the derision extended by Indian society to professions dominated by women also results in the persistence of the wage gap. The jobs of nurses and caregivers, no matter how strenuous, are viewed as 'women's work', which is a euphemism for work that requires little or no talent or skill.

Way Ahead:

Since it is fairly obvious that education alone cannot solve this problem, women need to be made aware of their rights and the minimum wage.

Strong labour market institutions and policies such as collective bargaining and minimum wages lowered the pay gap.

Citing OECD studies, the report observed that “the gender pay gap is smallest (8 per cent) in the group of countries where the collective bargaining rate is at least 80 per cent, and widest in countries with weak collective bargaining and no or very low minimum wages.”