New York, NY (BBN)- Men earn around 4-6 per cent more than women in developed countries –even when they have the same job title, employer and location, a study by salary-tracking website Glassdoor, has said.
The website, which aggregates anonymous reports on wages and working conditions, surveyed hundreds of thousands of salaries posted online and found a gender pay gap existed in each of the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France and Australia, reports CNBC.
The pay gap was worst in the U.S., where women earned only 75.9 cents per dollar earned by men, on average. The U.K. was a close second, with women earning 77.1 pence ($1.1) per £1 ($1.4) earned by men, on average.
Even when comparing men and women with the same job title at the same company, with similar education and experience, a pay gap remained. Men still earned 6.3 percent more than women on average in France, 5.4 percent more in the U.S. and 5.5 percent more in the U.K.
'Adjusted' gender pay gap (%): France: 6.3 per cent, UK: 5.5 per cent, Germany: 5.5 per cent, US: 5.4 per cent and Australia: 3.9 per cent.
The report's author, Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, said overt discrimination was not the primary reason for the pay gap.
"Women and men tend to pursue different career paths early in life and then sort into different industries and occupations, which, in large part, is due to a variety of societal expectations and traditional gender norms. This is the single largest factor we see contributing to today's gender pay gap," he said in a media release on Wednesday.
Chamberlain advocated salary transparency to help eliminate hard-to-justify pay gaps, as well as government policies to alleviate social pressures that push the sexes into different career paths and left women with a disproportionate share of child and elderly caregiving duties.
The U.K.'s Office for National Statistics reported last year that the gender pay based on median earnings had decreased to 9.4 percent from 9.6 percent in 2014. This was the lowest since surveying began in 1997, but the gap has changed relatively little in recent years.
Globally, women earn only 77 percent of what men do, according to estimates from the International Labour Organization. The gap has declined somewhat, but if current trends prevail, it will take more than 70 pears to close completely, the body said in a report this month.
BBN/SSR/AD