The gender pay gap

Gender pay gaps represent one of today’s greatest social injustice. According to the ILO Global Wage Report 2018/19, women earn on average about 20 per cent less than men, although there are wide variations across countries. Many factors can lie behind gender pay gaps, including differences in educational attainment, occupational segregation, or discrimination in pay and in access to particular types of jobs. Motherhood also brings about a wage penalty that can persist across a women’s working life. 

The present webpage thus provides links to key ILO documents and publications related to the question of the gender pay gap, and aims to provide tools that support ILO Member States’ efforts in progressively reducing and eliminating gender pay gaps.

ILO’s training module on gender pay gap

This self-paced learning module will allow you to:

• Discuss the different measures used to estimate gender pay gaps for the purposes of policy-making;
• Outline the key factors for effective policy-making to overcome gender pay gaps;
• Tackle gender pay gap through pay transparency legislation. 

Key documents

• Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111)
• Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100)