The gender pay gap in India stands at 27% according to the latest Monster Salary Index from Monster India. The report shows that men earned a median gross salary of INR 288.68 (USD 4.31) per hour whereas women earned a median gross salary of INR 207.85 (USD 3.10) per hour.
The report covers a period of 2 years and 9 months and eight different sectors – IT Services; Healthcare, caring services, social work; Education, research; Financial services, banking, insurance; Transport, logistics, communication; Construction and technical consultancy; Manufacturing and Legal and market consultancy, business activities.
The lowest gender pay gap of 17.7% was recorded in the banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI) and transport sectors. While the highest recorded pay gap was the manufacturing sector with a 34.9%.
According to the report, some of the reasons behind this gender pay gap could be the preference for male employees over female employees, preference for promotion of male employees to supervisory positions, career breaks of women due to parenthood duties and other socio-cultural factors.
“Worldwide, the lack of pay parity has taken centre stage with strong views being shared by sportspersons, political and business leaders alike. Men often receive higher salary offers than women, vying for the same title in the same organisation. Needless to say, the situation is far from desired in India, especially when the country is gearing towards inclusive development,” said Sanjay Modi, Managing Director (India/ Middle East/ South-east Asia/ Hong Kong).
Monster Salary Index (MSI) is a study of median wages of men and women in various sectors and their collective job satisfaction index.
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The data has been collected from the Paycheck.in, Salary Calculator and Monster Salary Index. The sample consists of 31,193 respondents, both male and female.
Wages of self-employed people are excluded from this sample. Employees from different age groups, varied industries, and various hierarchical positions in their respective occupations are included in the sample.
The highest wage gap was seen in the manufacturing sector, where the hourly wage for men was Rs 259.80 and for women, Rs 192.50. “Some of the reasons behind this gender pay gap could be the preference for male employees over female employees, preference for promotion of male employees to supervisory positions, career breaks of women due to parenthood duties and other socio-cultural factors,” according to the analysis.
While most sectors indicated an increase in women’s wages through these years, IT services showed a decline in the wages along with the sample of women being only 11.3%; and Legal and Market Consultancy, Business Activities had no data to show regarding the increase or decrease of yearly wages because of the extremely small sample (268) of women in that sector.
The report, thus, not only indicated the stark wage gap but also the participation of women in these sectors. It further showed that the hourly wages in the Education and Research sector was the lowest at Rs 205.29, while the highest was Information and Communication Technology sector at Rs 346.42.
News credits: Yahoo News
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