“Gender pay gap: why it exists and how to overcome itPrior to the full-scale Russian invasion, the gender pay gap in Ukraine was 18.6%, forcing women to work longer hours than men.
Experts attribute this to stereotypes and the low representation of women in leadership positions.”, — write: unn.ua
UNN has analyzed why there is a gender pay gap in our country, how social stereotypes affect this problem, and how it affects the Ukrainian economy.
According to the State Statistics Service, in Ukraine, before the full-scale Russian invasion, the gender pay gap in 2021 was 18.6%. Accordingly, this means that women have to work more than men, but receive lower wages. Thus, on average, women have 6.5 years of additional labor in their lifetime.
In 2015, the difference between men’s and women’s salaries was 26%, and by 2021, it had significantly decreased. Ukraine is currently showing positive dynamics in attracting women to professional and technical fields.
However, despite these positive trends, some challenges remain. For example, only 15% of companies in Ukraine are owned by women, and only 17.7% of businesses have women in management positions. This indicates that despite the high level of women’s involvement in education, it does not guarantee that they will earn more.
UNN talked to Iryna Andrusiak, head of the Center for Legal Studies of Gender Equality, and in her opinion, the main reason for the gender pay gap is not so much in Ukrainian legislation as in stereotypical thinking of society.
The law is very well written in terms of gender issues. We have social problems. There are no discriminatory norms, but when hiring girls, for example, they may be asked: “Are you married?” Do you plan to have children? Oh, if you’re not married, you’ll get married and have children soon.” That is, there is no such thing as a norm that says that women receive lesser wages for the same work done because they are women, and men need to support their families, and therefore they are paid more
According to Andrusiak, women pensioners are an extremely vulnerable social category in Ukraine. This is because, when they retire, they have a low minimum pension.
“And now we are starting to look for reasons why this is so. And here we have these stereotypes of thinking, these negative stereotypical practices, when women, in terms of percentage, hold much fewer leadership positions. This is because they are simply not elected to these leadership positions because they are women, because we have been stereotyping them for centuries, because women are not capable of leading, they cannot make decisions, they do not have leadership skills, they are emotionally unstable. And here, in fact, we need to look for the source of this problem, why we have this wage gap,” the expert says.
In particular, the human rights activist notes that legislative norms that restrict women’s rights in terms of remuneration should be discussed not only with regard to women’s individual needs, but also in the context of ensuring social equality and preventing abuse by employers.
“We can’t talk about individual cases of this or that woman. Because 20 women have the opportunity to hire a nanny, or have parents who can help, or a husband. And 70 women will not have such an opportunity. And the law in this context should still be strengthened for the majority of people and actually ensure that employers do not abuse this norm,” Andrusiak emphasized.
In addition, she noted that even despite changes in legal norms, the results will be seen in a few decades, not immediately.
The gender pay gap is an issue that should be considered not only in terms of discrimination against women, but also in terms of its impact on the country’s economy.
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that if women were involved in the labor market in the same way as men, global GDP would grow by 26% between 2015 and 2025.
UNN talked to economist Oleh Pendzin, who believes that the issue of the gender pay gap is partly losing its relevance due to the acute shortage of men in traditionally “male” professions.
In the context of the war and in the context of a sharp shortage of industrial specialties, an extremely large shortage of specialties in male professions, the possibility for women to retrain is growing sharply at the moment. So the issue of the gender gap, in my opinion, is leveled by the extremely large shortage of men in men’s professions. Today, if she wants, a woman can take any position in a male-dominated field with male pay in male specialties. The other thing is that this requires really serious retraining… because there are things that men do mainly because of their physiological characteristics. But in any case, during the war, this gender difference disappears to some extent