As a response to the staggering gender pay gap revealed in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, the U.N. Women agency has adopted the theme of “Press Progress,” in 2018 to emphasize how the vast majority of nations are at least 200 years away from gender parity.

The 2017 Global Gender gap report by the World Economic Forum, stated, “an average gap of 32.0 percent remains to be closed worldwide across the four Index dimensions in order to achieve universal gender parity.” The gender pay gap is essentially the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women

Additionally, when the report examined several regions, Western Europe recorded a gender gap of 25 percent, while North America had a gap of 28 percent, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia with a gap of 29 percent with Latin America and the Caribbean recording a gap of  29.8 percent.

Meanwhile, South Asia recorded a gap of 34 percent, while the Middle East and North Africa region recorded a gender gap of slightly less than 40 percent.

In India, a new report released Wednesday, by one of the biggest job websites, Monster, revealed that Indian women earned 20 percent less than their male counterparts for the same amount of work. Per the Monster Salary Index, MSI, men earned a median gross hourly salary of US$3.5 while the women earned US$2.8.

Monster India’s report which is based on a survey of nearly 5500 working women and men, also added, “While men with 0-2 years of experience earned 7.8 percent higher median wages than women, men with 6-10 years of experience earned 15.3 percent more. Men with 11 and more years of experience earned 25 percent higher median wages than women.”

Another report published by the Trades Union Congress, TUC, revealed that U.K. women are not earning the same as their male counterparts and end up working 67 days a year without pay.

The report which also comes at the heels of International Women’s Day called for government action and employers attention to work towards pay audits and come up with an action plan to help close the gender gap at the workplace. The trade union report also pointed out that gap between men’s and women’s gross weekly earnings has remained relatively consistent for at least two decades, from 1997 to 2017.

Frances O’Grady, the TUC’s general secretary, told the Guardian,”Nearly 50 years since the Ford machinists went on strike at Dagenham, the UK still has one of the worst gender pay gaps in Europe … Companies publishing information on their gender pay gaps is a small step in the right direction, but it’s nowhere near enough.”

According to the Office for National Statistics, when all workers, full and part-time, are included, the pay gap is 18.4 percent. “This … means that women effectively work for free for the first 67 days of the year,” the TUC stated.

In March 2017, the U.N. Women also decried the gender pay gap the “biggest robbery in history.”  On an average, women are paid nearly 23 percent lower than men and in countries like Turkey, the gap can be as much as 75 percent.

In the U.S., African American women earn only 60 cents, Native American women 59 cents and Hispanic women 55 cents for every US$1 that white men earn.

Native American women also have the highest poverty rate in the United States. A 2013 study by the Status of Women in the States group, which examined the socio-economic status of women based on their race, found that Native American and Hispanic women occupy the lowest rung on the pay scale when compared to white women, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and others.

Top Photo | Protesters build a wall of signs outside the White House for the Women’s March on Washington during the first full day of Donald Trump’s presidency in Washington, Jan. 21, 2017. (AP/John Minchillo)

© teleSUR