A study has highlighted the unequal pay between women and men. However, as is usually the case, gross hourly wages were not used as a measurement, but rather lifetime income. The result reflects the significance of the unequal pay.
Lifetime income
In Germany and around the world there is inequality in the income of women and men, and the wage gap is very wide. As a rule, hourly wages are compared here for illustrative purposes, but if you compare the income of a man and a woman over an entire working life, the inequality becomes even clearer.
For this purpose, a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation from 2020 compared the average lifetime working income for western and eastern Germany. As a result, women earn 45 and 40 percent less than men.
While a man in West Germany earns an average of 1.5 million euros in his working life, women only earn around 830,000 euros. In eastern Germany the difference is somewhat smaller, where women earn 660,000 euros, around 40 percent less than men, with a lifetime income of 1.1 million euros.
Traditional metrics “hide” inequality
The study thus highlights the so-called “Gender Lifetime Earnings Gap”. The differences of 45 and 40 percent in western and eastern Germany are so significant that highly qualified women born in 1974 or earlier earn just as much as low-qualified men.
But even for female graduates born in 1975, this large wage gap is not completely closed. According to the study, on average you can expect an income that is equivalent to that of a medium-skilled man.
To measure the gender pay gap, the difference between the gross hourly wages of men and women is usually evaluated. As the Federal Statistical Office has determined for 2022, wages will then only be 18 percent apart.
Manuela Barišic, labor market expert at the Bertelsmann Foundation, comments in the study that this method, “the current measurement, the gender pay gap, obscures how big the gap between men and women in income actually is.”
Mothers earn even less
The inequality particularly affects mothers; they always have worse opportunities on the job market. Women who have children must expect a significantly lower lifetime income than those without children. Meanwhile, this hardly matters to fathers.
The gap between men and mothers is considerably larger than that between men and women without children. Mothers born in 1985 can expect an average lifetime income of between 570,000 and 580,000 euros, depending on whether they live in the west or east of Germany.
50 percent of this inequality is due to part-time work and longer breaks from work; factors for this include childcare and caring for relatives and relatives.
“A significant part of women’s workforce potential is currently not being fully utilized,” explains Barišic.
Editorial team finanzen.net