Good News Ladies, We'll Get Equal Pay in About 118 Years

By Stassa Edwards  |  November 19, 2015 | 3:00am
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It’s time for a little good news, the kind of good news that you can pass down to and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren. According to new estimates from the World Economic Forum (WEF), it will be 118 years before women across the globe will achieve pay equality. A legacy, indeed.

The report indicates that progress to close the pay gap did a serious backslide during the 2008 financial crisis and that women’s pay now remains a decade behind their male counterparts. Women “are paid now on average is the equivalent of what men were paid in 2006,” The Guardian reports.

“The latest figures calculate that the average full-time salary for a working woman is $11,102 a year – little more than half the male average of $20,554. This almost matches men’s average income in 2006, which the WEF estimated at $11,351 (women’s pay then was $6,117).”

The report allows for multiple reasons for the sizable global pay gap, including workplaces structured on outdated ideas about family and childcare, as well as women’s high rates of employment in “caring” professions, like nursing and social work., which traditionally come with lower paychecks.

In addition to outlining the global pay gap, the WEF’s report ranked countries according to a broader definition of the gender gap, that definition included pay as well as access to health care, education and political systems. Countries like Norway and Iceland fared best in the overall ranking. The United States sat in 28th place behind both Britain and France.

The WEF’s solutions to closing the pay gap in fewer than 118 years include radical ideas like regulation of workplace discrimination, better maternity leave, and equally distributed childcare.

Image via Shutterstock.

 
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