Working women earned an average of 34,000 euros gross on an annual basis in 2020, an increase of sixty percent compared to 1977. This is apparent from figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), which contains income data of working men and women from 1977 to 2020 investigated. Working men earned an average of 52,000 euros gross per year in 2020, only twelve percent more than in 1977.
There are various reasons that the average annual income of working women in 2020 was more than 35 percent lower than that of working men. First of all, almost three quarters of women work part-time, compared to a quarter of men. In 2020, women worked a quarter less than working men with an average of 26.2 hours per week.
Another reason is the difference in gross hourly wages. In the Netherlands, men earn on average fourteen percent more per hour than women. The Netherlands is in tenth place in Europe in terms of countries where the differences in gross hourly wages are greatest. Furthermore, according to Statistics Netherlands, factors such as age differences with working men, occupational level and position play a role in current wage differences.
The difference in income is greatest between cohabiting men and women with children: more than 45 percent. This difference is mainly due to the fact that women work considerably less than men when their children are still small. Despite this, women with children have started to work more, reducing the income differential from 1977 to 77 percent.