South Korea was found to have the highest gender pay gap among 33 OECD countries.
PwC, a global accounting and consulting network, announced on Mar. 8 that it has released its Women in Work Index report, which measures and evaluates women’s employment performance in 33 OECD countries on International Women’s Day.
PwC has been releasing the Women in Work Index every year since 2011. The index measures changes in OECD countries based on five indicators related to gender equality in the workplace. These indicators include the gender pay gap, which is the difference between the median hourly wage of men and women, female labor force participation rate, the gap between male and female labor force participation rates, female unemployment rate, and female full-time employment rate.
This year’s report is based on statistical data from 2022. The survey covers 33 of the 38 OECD countries, excluding Colombia, Costa Rica, Latvia, Lithuania, and Turkey.
Over the last decade, the average score for the five indicators has been increasing steadily. In 2022, the average score was 68, which is slightly higher than the previous year’s score of 66. This increase was caused by an increase in the female labor force participation rate, which rose from 70.8% in 2021 to 72.1% in 2022, and a decrease in the female unemployment rate, which fell from 6.4% in 2021 to 5.3% in 2022.
The gender pay gap has been improving at a slower pace than other indicators. Although the average gender pay gap in the OECD decreased by 3 percentage points between 2011 and 2022, it increased by 0.3 percentage points from the previous year, reaching 13.5% in 2022.
“Although women’s economic participation has increased, those excluded from high-quality, high-paying jobs are still worse off than men.,” the report says, predicting that “It could take over 50 years to close the gender pay gap in OECD countries based on current trends.”
