“When controlling for relevant variables such as occupation, experience, and hours worked, women do not earn less than men for the same work.”

Despite significant progress in recent decades, labor markets across the world remain divided along gender lines. Female labor force participation has remained lower than male participation, gender wage gaps are high, and women are overrepresented in the informal sector and among the poor.

Since 2018, UK firms with at least 250 employees have been mandated to publicly disclose gender equality indicators. Exploiting variations in this mandate across firm size and time, we show that pay transparency closes 19 percent of the gender pay gap by reducing men's pay growth.

In 2024, the average unadjusted gender pay gap in the EU was 11.1%. This means that, without correcting for differences in individual and job characteristics of employed men and women, Luxembourg is the only EU country where, on average, men earned less than women, in 2024.

When data are controlled for a wide variety of compensable factors, including job title, there is still a gap, with women making $0.99 for every $1 men earn. This difference has remained unchanged for five years.

Much of the gender pay gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience. The narrowing of the gap over the long term is attributable in large part to gains women have made in each of these dimensions.

The normalized gender pay gap is calculated by comparing salaries of men and women in similar positions, with similar experience and qualifications. In the USA, the "normalized" salary gap is 95.24%, indicating a remaining gap where women earn 95.24% of men's compensation.

When data is controlled for factors like job title and years of experience, Payscale found women earn $0.99 for every dollar men earn — a figure that has remained unchanged for five years, indicating that even when doing the same work, women are still frequently paid less.

On average across OECD countries, full-time-employed highly-educated women (i.e. those with at least tertiary level education) earn about 22% less than similarly-educated full-time-employed men, while in comparison the gap among low-skilled full-time workers (i.e. those without upper secondary education) stands at 20.5%.

The adjusted gender pay gap compares the earnings of men and women who occupy similar roles, with similar levels of experience, education, and working hours, providing a clearer picture of how much of the pay gap is due to gender alone, rather than other external factors. This measure aims to identify pay disparities by offering a more realistic view of how gender impacts earnings within similar roles.

Hours worked and labor market experience are the most substantial observable variables in explaining the gender pay gap. However, the gender earnings gap increases with age, and in many jobs, pay is nonlinear in hours worked, disproportionately affecting women of childbearing years and their occupational choices.

Using PSID data from 1980 to 2010, the results show that men's returns to education and work experience are higher than women's, and the 'unexplained' portion of the gap grew from 71.4% in 1980 to 85.2% in 2010. Even for workers demonstrating high commitment to the labor market (full-time and at least 26 weeks), human capital differences have little effect on the gender wage gap, suggesting women are subject to a different set of rules.

Even in the formal sector, women doing the same work and having the same level of education earn less than their male counterparts.

In 2026, nine of the states with such laws had effectively closed the controlled gender pay gap, including California, Washington, D.C., and New York. But six other states with pay transparency laws did not close the gap, “suggesting that disclosure requirements may not be enough without consistent, data‑driven compensation practices.”

Employed women work, on average, three to five hours fewer than employed men, even controlling for demographics and occupation. The analysis suggests an important role for hours worked in mediating the gender wage gap, as workers choose jobs as a bundle of compensation and expected hours worked.

In 2026, nine of the states with such laws had effectively closed the controlled gender pay gap, including California, Washington, D.C., and New York. But six other states with pay transparency laws did not close the gap, “suggesting that disclosure requirements may not be enough without consistent, data‑driven compensation practices.”

“Even if you compare just within jobs or within education level, you still see gaps. It's estimated that at least one third of the wage gap is unaccounted for by other factors. Therefore, we can assume it's down to discrimination.” A big contributor to the fact that men continue to earn more than women in similar positions doing essentially the same work may in part lie in the bonus gap.

Controlling for the doctors' degrees, specialties, and patient satisfaction ratings, the researchers found that doctors in all-male groups tended to earn more than men working solo. However, women working in all-female groups earned less than women working solo.

When controlling for standard wage explanatory variables, the gender wage gap was reduced by 3.12% during COVID-19. The wage premium for men is primarily driven by marital status, followed closely by child status, with married women having the largest wage gap and childless women having higher wages when controlling for women with children.