Women have started to earn more, differences with men remain large
This is evident from a study published on Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). That more have gone to work. The figures therefore do not say anything about the pay of women with an identical job as men.
Working women will earn an average of almost 34 thousand euros on an annual basis in 2020. In 1977 this was still about 21 thousand euros. Men’s incomes went from 46 thousand euros to 52 thousand euros in the same period. the income of running last year more than a third lower.
Although women have started to work more, the number of part-time jobs among them remains high: almost three quarters of women in the Netherlands worked part-time in 2020, compared to a quarter of men. The average working week for women is 26.2 hours, for men it is 35.4 hours. Nowhere in the European Union do women and men work part-time as often as in the Netherlands.
Lower hourly rate
The fact that women are less than men is not the cause of the income difference. The hourly wage of women is also lower on average than that of their male colleagues: in 2020 this was about 14 percent lower.
Also, the gap in hourly wages is not only the direct result of the difference in sex. For example, men more often have a managerial position and a higher professional level. Also female employees are higher educated, the difference in hourly wages has improved by 6 percentage points since 1977.
Despite this decrease, the hourly wages of men and women in the Netherlands still differ widely: the gap is smaller in 17 countries in the European Union. According to figures for 2020, the difference is greatest in Latvia with more than 22 percent, followed by Estonia with about one fifth. In Luxembourg, the difference in hourly wages is the smallest of all EU Member States at less than 1 percent. The wage differences are also small in Romania (2 percent) and Slovenia (3 percent).
International Women’s Day
Not only have women started working, more women have started working. In 1977 there were 223 working men for 100 working women. Last year, with 100 women out of 113 men, that was a lot closer together. In total, the number of working women increased from 1.8 million to 4.6 million in the past 43 years. In men, this increased from 3.9 million to 5.2 million.
The research was published on International Women’s Day. On this day, all kinds of activities are organized worldwide with a focus on emancipation and women’s rights. In Amsterdam an advance on this was already taken last Saturday: thousands of visitors moved in a procession through the city in the annual Women’s March.