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Indian Women Earn 19% Less Than Men, Gender Pay Gap Widens In High Skills Jobs: Report

As high as 60% of the working women felt that they were discriminated at work, the survey found.
Francis Mascarenhas / Reuters

Indian women earn 19% less than men, a survey released on Thursday revealed.

The Monster Salary Index 2018 showed that the median gross hourly salary for men in India was Rs 242.49 in 2018 against Rs 196.3 for women — a difference of Rs 46.19.

The pay gap

The 2018 survey showed the gender pay gap narrow by 1% from 20% in 2017.

“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 galvanise forces across corporates and industries to work towards gender pay parity,” said Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO, Monster.com, APAC & Gulf.

The pay gap spans across sectors. In the IT industry, the survey showed men earning 26% more than women. In the manufacturing sector, men earned 24% more while in healthcare and social work, men earned 21% more.

Financial services, banking and insurance is the only industry where the pay gap narrowed to 2%.

Years of experience don’t help

In the initial years of work, the gender pay gap is moderate. Women with 0-2 years and 3-5 years earn 3% and 5% less than their male counterparts, respectively.

But, this rises significantly as the years go by. Women with 6-10 years of experience earn 10% less. For those with over 10 years of experience, the pay gap widens to 15%.

Neither does skill level

The gap also widens at higher skill levels. The pay gap is 20% for women in skilled occupations and 30% for women in highly skilled occupations. The survey’s data showed no pay gap in semi-skilled work.

Discrimination at the workplace

Monster.com has also conducted the Women of India Inc survey aimed at understanding the working women of India and their workplace concerns which noted that 71% men and 66% women feel that gender parity needs to be a top priority for their organisations. However, over one-third of the women felt that senior management did not follow through on this even if they said it was top priority.

As high as 60% of the working women felt that they were discriminated at work, the most notable form of discrimination being the perception that they were less serious about work once they got married (47%). About 46% women felt that maternity leads to a perception that they will quit. About 46% women also believed there was a notion that women couldn’t put in the same number of hours as men.

Maternity

Over 53% women said that their company did not offer flexible work structure. Both men and women cited ‘lack of proper childcare’ as a key challenge.

Men say they care, women aren’t convinced

While 51% men said they could be effective advocates for gender initiative programs at the workplace, close to 44% women felt men were allies only in private because they were scared of being judged by their male peers. About 38% women felt men did not know what to say or do to tackle issues of parity.

(With PTI inputs)

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.