The wage differential between women and
men around the world varies slightly depending on how it is measured. In Poland, a woman earns 91 cents
for every dollar a man earns. In Israel, 81 cents. In South Korea, women earn
only 65 cents per dollar. (Valentin Rugwabiza,
Rwanda's ambassador to the United Nations) We know that just unlocking the potential of women, that's our fastest multiplier in terms of our growth. That's a great accelerator for poverty eradication. (Hillary Clinton, Former Secretary of State) When we go to the store,
we don't get a discount for women. We have to pay the same amount as everyone else. This is deducted from the family income. When someone mentions the wage gap,
we often hear another sentence as well.
– Equal salaries…
– …for equal work. – Equal salaries…
– …for equal work. – Equal salaries…
– …for equal work. This appears as if women are paid less for the same job as men, which means that women are paid less
simply for being a woman. There is a word for that: discrimination. But a large
, multi-country body of research shows that stark wage differentials
likely explain only a small portion of the gender pay gap. (Fronique de Rugy,
Researcher in Economics) It's a real number, but it tells you hardly anything about the real inequality between women and men. (Greta van Susteren)
Journalist Women are not looking for an advantage,
but for an equal opportunity. They are looking for equal wages.
It is a huge difference. (Katherine Jakobsdottir,
Prime Minister of Iceland) If you want to change the culture,
you can't just sit and wait. You have to act to change that. If the reason is not limited to sexism, why do women all over the world get
paid much less than men? A woman in a profession has chosen to
ignore a woman's place… it doesn't matter if you have the body of a man or a woman. They should be paid accordingly. I see very advanced office work. Women earn 80 cents
for every dollar made by men. It is time for us to unite and raise our voice. Women will rule this country. And that's what it's about. "Why Women's Wages Are Low" The story in the United States is
similar in many other countries. A short time ago, women,
especially white women, did not work outside the home at all. "(Anne Marie Slaughter) "
International Lawyer" Back in the 1950s, not many women were in the workforce.
Women were not as educated as men. They either didn't finish their university studies, or they didn't get the same qualifications at university, Or they never went to college Most of the women in my neighborhood didn't work My mom didn't work The women I saw in a professional role
were the only teachers Most of the women didn't reach that stage 70 percent of the women held menial jobs
on assembly lines in factories or in offices. Working women don't object
to repetitive chores and are good at work
that requires fine dexterity of the fingers People understand that a woman
may need to earn a little money, but a career? That was for men Your high score on the office aptitude test indicates that you might become a secretary Good.
The discrimination was also perfectly legal, as employers were allowed to post advertisements
for men-only jobs . Growing up, I knew only one female lawyer. Only one. Never met a doctor. I never even imagined there were female engineers. The reason for this is due to several interrelated reasons, m Examples include the low rates of women's education, the lack of women in the workforce, the agglomerations in traditional women's industries, the fact that it was perfectly legal to
pay lower wages to women, as well as a series of cultural norms
about gender roles and abilities. These were the basic explanations for the
wage differential. Then, within a few decades, things changed. Sisterhood is strong! Join us now! The screams of the battle for the women's liberation movement ring out on Fifth Avenue in New York. The first woman to receive the greatest honor from National Geographic. Applause rose in the House, "Benazir Bhutto", the new Prime Minister. The first American woman in space. The first woman to be nominated to
the Supreme Court. The first woman to run for president. Your candidacy is a message to women
that the doors are open. Women outperform men in obtaining
university degrees and advanced degrees.
Women are committed to providing the next generation. Perhaps for the first time in history, there are more women
working than men. It was a radical change, to see women compete for scholarships
I couldn't compete with, to attend universities that were not open to women, to take jobs that were closed
to women. This has changed dramatically. Many factors
that caused the wage gap shrunk, only one. “Women should raise children,” but what remains is that women carry children. The woman is considered the main responsible for the family. Even as women become
doctors, lawyers, and heads of state, society still expects them to do most of the work involved in
raising children. In the US
and UK, even in advanced Scandinavia, surveys today show
that only a small part of the population thinks that women should work full time
when they have children.
'Mothers of preschool children
should work full time' For men, expectations are reversed. 70 percent of Americans think
new parents should work full time. There is still a large percentage of people, not only in our country, but in the whole world, who think that when a woman becomes a mother, she
should not work. This limited idea has been proven
time and time again. I learned, after I got back to work,
that my time was limited, not by my boss, but by me, because I wanted to go back to that child
and spend time with her, I learned that I could
do a lot of work in 15 minutes. I used every opportunity to work. I think I've been a much more skilled employee
since I had kids. Even when a mother works full time,
just like her male partner, she spends 9 hours more per week than she does
looking after the kids and the house. Over the course of a year, this equates to an additional 3 months
of working a full-time job.
This is the crux of the wage gap, and to understand why, we have to follow the story of a young couple who are just beginning their careers. I always think of the paths that
many of the law students I have taught. They look quite alike. They have the same academic record and the same experiences. Then we watch what happens next when they reach reproductive age
in their late 20s or early 30s and start thinking about having children. If they have children, at that point, one of them should stay at home. You can have many children, but a parent should be at home
for situations where a parent is needed. So, he will get a promotion. As for her, she had to refuse
some of these projects and missions, and some travel missions. So after 8 or 10 years, he becomes a partner and
can achieve many successes from there. She did not become a partner. You don't get paid the same. She works comfortable hours or even part-time work, and from there, the difference
between what the two earn grows exponentially.
This is the story that the data tell
in study after study in different countries. A Danish study brilliantly showed how having children affects income. “Children and Gender Inequality:
Evidence from (Denmark)” This is a man's pay trajectory. Look what happens when he has a baby. This is the path of women's wages. If we compare the income of a woman with children to the income of a woman without children… we see that the difference in income
is not related to being a woman as much as it is to being a mother. The gender pay gap
is effectively between a woman with children and the rest. Women who do not take care of a family earn 96 percent of a man's wages.
This is the penalty of motherhood. Some mothers do not see this as a problem. They want to spend more time with their children, and they don't mind if it involves earning less money. Some women make a career decision based on their desire to start a family, and that's definitely okay. Presenting it as a punishment as if to deny… First, that women make that decision, but also that there is so much value… not only for the children or the family, but also for the women who make that decision. The wage gap that is based on decisions, is
different… The wage gap that is caused by being a woman and not getting equal wages
for doing the same work as a man. But often, men and women do not face
the same choices and decisions.
In the United States,
single mothers are 3 times more likely than single fathers. As we grow up, most of us receive the message that childcare
is the responsibility of the woman, not the man. For example, the 1980s advice column posts
about office decorating tips at work, and they are still true today. One reader wrote,
"I got a big promotion, and I 'm getting my own desk for the first time. How do I decorate it?" And this answer was: "I don't know your initials
if you're a man or a woman, and the answer varies according to your gender. If you're a man and you have a family, post pictures of your family in the office, because people will think you're a very good breadwinner.
If you're a woman and you have kids, don't put Pictures of your family in your office, because people will think
you can't focus on your work." The roots of this problem are very deep and go back to our concept of the
family, mothers and fathers. That is why it is very difficult to eliminate this difference. But it is not impossible. In two countries, Iceland and Rwanda, the wage gap has
been radically eliminated within a few decades.
Looking at these two cases,
we learn important lessons about what it takes to build a society in which women earn the
same salary as men. Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world, and a few decades ago,
women did not enjoy some basic rights. Before 1994… "(Console Nishimwe),
Women's Rights Defender" …Women did not have the right to speak in public. A married woman … (Valentin Rugwabeza,
(Rwanda) Ambassador to the United Nations) …was not allowed to open a bank account without her husband's permission. But in 1994, everything changed. It is the fifth day of massacres and bloodshed in the country of "Rwanda" in Central Africa. Thousands of people may have died tonight… the fiercest fighting in the Central African nation of Rwanda
. Within 3 months, 800,000 people were killed. I lost my father and 3 brothers, and survived with my mother and sister. After the violence,
women made up 60 to 70 percent of Rwanda's population. It completely destroyed the fabric of our society. And we had to do anything to survive. The shortage of men has meant that women have to join the workforce in huge numbers…
And take jobs they wouldn't have thought of a year ago. Women worked in the police, for example,
or in the army. Gradually, women became
the mayors and governors. Women really helped change the country. The new government realized
that rebuilding "Rwanda" required women. They immediately adopted new policies aimed at women assuming positions of power. "Constitution of the Republic of (Rwanda)" The preamble to the new constitution included a commitment to equal rights
between men and women, and stipulated that 30 percent of representatives at all levels of government would be women. Today, women in Rwanda hold
61 percent of parliament seats… …the highest percentage in the world. The participation rate of women
in the labor force is 83.7 percent. Rwanda is one of the few countries
where women have as many opportunities as men to work outside the home. The constitution also created a gender watchdog, which ensures that public programs respect the country's goals for gender equality. A young girl in Rwanda doesn't think there is anything she is not allowed to do. They don't have to grow up in a system where they feel
there will be some limits.
This cultural shift around sex began as a survival mechanism after extermination. But thanks to strict policies, Rwanda has made sustained progress
in eliminating this difference. The World Economic Forum has set
the wage gap in Rwanda at 86 cents on the dollar. In the global north,
the tiny island of Iceland has made significant progress
towards eliminating the wage differential. But they took a different path
to achieving equality. The real turning point was 1975. A year before I was born… “(Katrin Jakobsdottir),
Prime Minister (Iceland) … Women in Iceland quit their jobs and took to the streets to
protest the wage gap. Without them in their jobs… "(Brenhildor Haider) A
feminist … Business cannot remain open, and this unleashed a massive popular uprising that began to change society little by little. The first result was, in fact, that women became more visible
in the political arena. In 1980, five years after the strike, Iceland voted
for the world's first democratically elected president. Long live Iceland! The number of women
in Iceland's parliament has skyrocketed. Then in the following years,
we saw the policies change. In 1981, Iceland passed a law
requiring employers to give newborn mothers
3 months of paid leave.
The Ministry of Social Affairs extended the leave to 6 months in 1988. The guaranteed maternity leave
was a new idea at the time, and the “Iceland” vacation was
one of the most generous vacations in the world. But as progressive as this law was, it encouraged mothers to stay at
home while new fathers continued to work , reinforcing the social tradition
that is at the core of the wage gap that women are responsible for childcare,
not men. The lawyers made a revolutionary order. What if they gave new fathers paternity leave and made it a privilege that men could take advantage of
or lose, and fathers feel compelled to use? Iceland passed that law in 2000. Compulsory paternity leave has made a difference in the culture of men in Iceland, and it's a very positive difference. Men of younger generations expect to take time off to look after their children. And that makes all the difference, at home, but also in the job market, because now you can expect, if you're hiring a guy or a young woman, they're both going to take maternity or paternity leave. In 2004, the wage gap in Iceland was
somewhat the same as in the United States, but in the following years, the gender wage gap has narrowed so that today, women in Iceland
earn about 90 cents for every dollar a man earns.
So we know that reducing
the gender pay gap is not impossible. But such family-friendly policies may have had a payoff that we don't see immediately. These are privileges. It's great to have
more options like this. We should not expect it for free. Some women choose to have children,
while others do not. Some men choose to have children,
while some do not. Can I look at who chose to have children and say, "You have to pay for that somehow"? If the mother takes a very long vacation, what should a small business owner
who has only 3 employees do? I do not want to punish the woman, but we also do not want to punish the
owner of the small business. It's not a bad thing in a big company, because they have a lot more flexibility in filling positions
that doesn't hurt the bottom line. While it is probably not the biggest reason why
women earn less than men and that it varies enormously
across countries and industries, women still do not receive equal pay for
equal work.
There is a percentage that cannot be reduced
due to discrimination and discrimination. It is very clear that what the workplace prefers… is found in men. I've seen it in very different places, where, you know, the
guy you discuss sports with, the guy you play golf with, is someone you get along with and feel more comfortable around. But that kind of segregation
receded over the decades as more women entered the workplace and the
culture changed. Changing the expectation that
women should raise and care for children will require another cultural shift. In the view of many
who work on this issue, that change begins with men. Until we consider both men and women
responsible for the care and earning of the day, we will not reach that stage, because as long as this is the problem of the woman, we reinforce that social mold
that places care under her responsibility. The burden will be lightened on women only
when men feel comfortable saying, "I'm going to that parent-teacher conference. I'm not going to let my wife go." Or, "I'd really like to go
to this baby safety check.
He's going to get vaccinated. I'd like to be there." The pay gap is not just a feminist problem.
It's a family problem. Women have every right to enjoy motherhood
without being punished at work. Translation "".