男女間賃金格差の解消進まず、原因は「母親ペナルティー」

【ロンドン（英国）ＡＦＰ＝時事】国際監査法人プライスウォーターハウスクーパースは７日、経済協力開発機構（ＯＥＣＤ）加盟国全体で過去１０年間、男女間賃金格差の解消が遅々として進まなかった最大の要因は、女性が育児によって被る生涯賃金の減少を意味する『母親ペナルティー』だと結論付ける調査報告書を公表した。（写真は資料写真）
　２０２１年のデータを使用した最新の調査報告書「働く女性インデックス」２０２３年版によると、時給の中央値で比較した男女間の賃金格差は１４％で、２０１１年からの縮小幅はわずか２．５ポイントだった。
　報告書は「母親ペナルティー」について、「女性が出産後に復職する際に経験する不完全就業（パートタイムや能力が生かされない雇用状態）やキャリアの遅れによって引き起こされ、世界のほぼすべての国で女性の育児負担が多く不公平なことで永続化している」と指摘している。
　英国では「子育て費用の高騰」や「共有両親休暇を取得する男性の少なさ」によって男女間の格差が拡大している。
　母親と家族にかかる負担を軽減し、女性の「無償ケア労働」を減らす一助として、子育て費用を安く保つのが重要だという。無償ケア労働を男女に平等に分担させるには、政策的解決が必要だという。
　働く女性インデックスの上位３か国は、ルクセンブルク、ニュージーランド、スロベニアだった。英国は１４位だったが、先進７か国（Ｇ７）中では最も順位が高かった。カナダは１８位、ドイツは２１位、フランスは２３位、米国は２５位、日本は２８位、イタリアは３０位だった。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/03/08-15:59）

There has been minimal global movement toward gender pay equality because many women still face a motherhood penalty after having children, a study said Tuesday.
Progress has been exceedingly slow in industralized nations over the past decade, consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said in a report using latest available 2021 data.
The average pay gap between men and women, in terms of median hourly earnings, stands at 14 percent and has only narrowed by 2.5 percentage points since 2011, according to PwC's Women in Work Index.
It would take half a century to reach gender parity at this rate, the group said, adding recent improvements were driven by post-Covid recovery rather than genuine progress.
The motherhood penalty -- the loss in lifetime earnings experienced by women raising children -- has become the most significant driver of the gender pay gap, PwC concluded in its report.
Prompted by the underemployment and slower career progression women experience on returning to work after childbirth, it is perpetuated by the unfair share of childcare women take on in almost every country around the world.
In Britain, gender inequality was exacerbated by a childcare affordability crisis and the low take up by fathers of shared parental leave, the report said.
Affordable childcare is critical in helping to ease the pressure on mothers and families, and reduce women's unpaid care load.
This needs to be complemented with policy solutions that aim to redistribute unpaid childcare more equally between women and men.
Luxembourg topped PwC's annual index, which rates the performance of OECD nations using key metrics for women's employment outcomes.
The second best performer was New Zealand, followed by Slovenia.
If the rebound from Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that we can't rely on economic growth alone to produce gender equality -- unless we want to wait another 50 years or more, said PwC economist Larice Stielow.
We must design and develop policy solutions that actively address the underlying causes of the inequality that exist today, she added.
Britain stood at 14th place, but was the top G7 nation ahead of Canada (18), Germany (21), France (23), the United States (25), Japan (28) and Italy (30).