Equal Pay Will Not Be Achieved Until 2086

In early March, the UN warned that women will be paid less than men for a further 70 years if the pay gap continues to reduce at the almost stagnant rate that it does now. This news comes from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 20 years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women and the UN where 189 countries vowed to strive for gender equality and female empowerment in health, education, politics, human rights and employment.

On average, women across the world earn just 77% of a man's salary, a figure that has only improved by 3% since the talks in 1995. America sees one of the highest with a 22% pay gap, with a similar story in the EU where women on average earn 16.4% less than men. According to an EU research document of 2014, the highest pay gaps in Europe are in Estonia (30%), Austria (23.4%) and Germany (22.4%), whilst the lowest and most equal is Slovenia with a 2.5% gap. Despite the UK's Equality Act (2010), which encompasses equal pay, the Guardian shows that there is still a 19.1% gender gap in wages.

There is a further pay gap between mothers and childless women that sees women with children as victims of a wage reduction when they return to work after maternity leave. Often having to work part time to balance childcare and work, they fall at a disadvantage. The aptly titled "motherhood" pay gap is shown to increase per child. This statistic completely contradicts the aims of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, denying women the right to sexual agency and equality as the decision to have children consequently leads to reduction of salary.

Presently, equal opportunities from birth are claimed to be questionable too; the EU states that although a boy and a girl are born equal, educational and career expectations means that the boy will be earning around 16% more than the girl when they grow up. Furthermore, the executive director of UN women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka estimated that a girl born today will be 81 years old before she has the same chance as a man to become a CEO. She goes onto state that a girl will have to be 50 before she has an equal chance to run a country.

Although there has been progress with the percentages closing up, this change is not happening nearly rapidly enough. Unless there are set targets by the partaking countries, women and men will not reach equality in the workplace until 2086. The ILO claim that they will drive forward gender equality and women's economic empowerment to meet up with the aims set out 20 years ago.

Does it demotivate you knowing that the society you live in struggles to deliver equality even when there are laws to implement it?