How big is the gender gap in earnings?

Gender earnings gap persists, with men earning more than women across all forms of work. In 2023, male self-employed workers earned 2.8 times that of women, while male regular wage workers earned 24% more and male casual workers earned 48% more. The gap in hourly earnings is lower, with men in regular wage work earning 4% more than women in 2023. Social norms and individual decisions shape gender disparities in the workforce, with policy needed to remove barriers limiting women's hours of work.

The story so far: The Periodic Labour Force Surveys (PLFS) have been monitoring the gender earnings gap across various forms of employment from April-June 2019 to 2023. This latest round has introduced a crucial focus on weekly hours worked, revealing that the inequality in total earnings might not capture the full picture. Women, on average, work fewer hours than men, attributed to a combination of social pressures and personal choices, highlighting the complex interplay between societal norms and individual decisions in shaping gender disparities in the workforce.

The Nobel prize-winning work of Claudia Goldin focused on the technological, social and institutional factors determining inequalities between men and women in America. Such work has resonance for India as well, where there exists a vast literature by Indian scholars examining the many disparities in work participation and wages affecting working women.

Earnings for all types of workers are converted to weekly figures. Table 1 shows the ratio of weekly earnings for men and woman at the all-India level – aggregating across rural and urban sectors – from the quarter April-June 2019 to April-June 2023. A figure above 1 indicates greater men’s earnings relative to women: a figure of 1.24, for instance, indicates that men’s earnings are 24% greater than that of women.

Men earn more than women across all forms of work, the gap greatest for the self-employed. In 2023, male self-employed workers earned 2.8 times that of women. In contrast, male regular wage workers earned 24% more than women and male casual workers earned 48% more. The gender gap in earnings is still a persistent phenomenon.

However, there are differences in trends. The gender gap has increased for self-employed workers, while falling for regular wage workers. Male regular wage workers earned 34% more than women from 2019 to 2022, with the gap falling to 24% in 2023.

These gaps do not fully indicate inequalities in earnings per work effort, for women work lesser hours per men during the week across all forms of work, as shown in Table 2.

In 2023, the gap in work hours was largest for self-employed workers, where men worked 50% more hours than women, and lowest for regular wage workers (19%). Though the gap was the smallest, men and women in regular wage workers worked the longest hours, at 51 and 43 hours per week respectively. While the ratio is roughly constant for regular wage workers, there is a huge increase for self-employed workers.