How can we close the gender gap in developed countries?

Today is Equal Pay Day in the US, which marks how many extra days American women must work on average to earn what the average American man earned in the previous year.

The wage gap in America currently stands at 22%, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). There are numerous factors which influence this, one being the trend of women taking lower-paid jobs in so-called "pink-collar" jobs in industries such as service, education, or health care.

Of course, the division of work within family units also plays a role: women are still more likely to allocate more time to housework than working and earning.

This disparity in earnings carries much wider implications for women's well-being. According to US census data, American women are almost twice as likely as men to retire into poverty.

Solomon W. Polachek writes about how policymakers can work to decrease the gender gap in developed economies. He notes that the gender gap is smallest between single men and single women, indicating that more work needs to be done to balance the division of labor in family households. Polachek suggests that policies which promote greater day care utilization and aim to increase women’s lifetime work can help to do this.

Leslie S. Stratton writes more specifically on how housework is split between men and women. She says that wider labor market policies such as sales and income taxes also affect how labor is split within the family, and so may even play a role in reducing the gender gap.

Read more here.

Related articles:
Equal pay legislation and the gender wage gap, by Solomon W. Polachek
Determinants of housework time, by Leslie S. Stratton