Pushing for Pay Equity: Why Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value Is Still Urgent

Despite decades of progress, women globally continue to earn about 20% less than men, with even wider gaps for women of colour, migrant women, and mothers. Pay inequity compounds poverty, weakens social protection, and amplifies crisis impacts. Achieving equal pay for work of equal value requires structural reform-across job evaluation, care systems, labor protections, and leadership accountability.

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Main Idea

Pay equity is not a marginal fairness issue but a systemic economic and organizational failure, driven by undervaluation of women's work, informal employment, unpaid care burdens, and discriminatory decision-making across labor markets.

Key Arguments

The gender pay gap is persistent and intersectional While the global average gap stands at 20%, women of colour, migrant women, women with disabilities, and mothers face substantially larger penalties.

Pay inequality compounds poverty and crisis impact Lower lifetime earnings expose women and families to higher poverty risk, especially during economic shocks such as COVID-19.

Equal pay goes beyond identical work Work of equal value may differ in tasks but requires comparable skill, responsibility, effort, and working conditions-and must be rewarded equally.

Care work and informality distort pay systems Unpaid care responsibilities and overrepresentation in informal work systematically suppress women's earnings and social protection.

Evidence / Examples

Global Pay Gap and Poverty Risk

Women earn on average 80% of men's wages globally
Up to 342.4 million women and girls may live on less than $2.15/day by 2030 if trends persist

Intersectional Pay Penalties (United States)

Black women: 63.7 cents per dollar earned by white men
Native women: 59 cents
Latinas: 57 cents

Legal and Policy Frameworks

ILO Equal Remuneration Convention (C100) defines equal pay for work of equal value
New Zealand Equal Pay Amendment Bill (2020) extended pay equity to different but equally valued work, including female-dominated sectors

Informality and Care Burden

Women perform three more hours of unpaid care work daily than men
Informal work excludes women from labor law protections and benefits

HR Implications

Job evaluation is central to pay equity Organizations cannot close gaps without analytically assessing job value beyond titles or historical pay.

Pay equity failures start upstream Recruitment, role design, promotion criteria, and return-to-work policies often embed inequality before pay decisions occur.

Benefits and social protection matter Pensions, insurance, parental support, and job security strongly influence lifetime earnings and retention.

Informality inside firms increases risk Contract ambiguity, discretionary pay, and opaque progression disproportionately disadvantage women.

Leadership Insights

Pay gaps reflect organizational choices Persistent inequity signals how leaders value roles, skills, and care-related work-not individual performance.

Equity is resilience strategy Fair pay strengthens workforce stability, productivity, and crisis resilience.

Care is a strategic dependency Organizations rely on unpaid care systems while externalizing their costs, creating hidden vulnerability.

Accountability must be shared Closing gaps requires leadership ownership, not delegation to HR alone.

Behavioral Science

Invisible Labor Bias Care and coordination work-often performed by women-is undervalued because it lacks clear market signals.

Motherhood Penalty Cognitive biases downgrade assumptions about commitment and competence once women become mothers.

Status Quo Bias Organizations preserve inequitable pay structures because change is politically and cognitively costly.

Poverty Trap Dynamics Lower pay and weak protection increase risk aversion, limiting job mobility and negotiation behavior.

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