The wage gap exists and even wins Nobel prizes

This week Claudia Goldín won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on the gender pay gap. In the same week the candidate for the Frente de Todos, Sergio Massa, used the term in the last presidential debate but did not hit the key and in the previous debate, another of the candidates for president, Javier Milei, denied its existence. In this article, Florencia Tundis, activist economist and part of the organization Feminist Economics explains what the wage gap is and why there is so little clarity about it. In the last debate, Massa referred to the gap and blurted out, “Men and women are going to earn the same for the same job.” The idea was to include equality as one of the proposals of Peronism but what he said is not entirely true. While the gap seeks equal pay, it is not measured only by what women and men earn in the world of work.” The wage gap measures the average monthly earnings of men and women and is the difference between them, for example, generally around 25, 27% and means that men earn on average 25% more than women. It is a measurement made in our case in the country by the INDEC, but it is an economic indicator that is measured worldwide, “explains Tundis and adds: “We must also clarify that there are different types of gaps, there is the gap by main occupation, the gap by total income that may have, for example, income obtained by rents “. The feminization of work is a crucial factor when measuring this wage gap since most of them, such as cleaning or care tasks, are composed almost one hundred percent of women. “There is something very important that is the gap for informal and formal wages, the gap in informal wages is greater than that of formal wages, which is not a minor fact since women are overrepresented in informal jobs.”  In the first presidential debate, Javier Milei denied the existence of the wage gap and argued “if women earned less, companies would hire them because they are cheaper.” This argument is a fallacy since, first, the gap is not only explained by what registered employees earn doing the same task but also by unregistered work that is, for the most part, made up of women. Tundis, in addition, argues that, although that is not only the reason, charging differently for the same task, happens much more than we imagine and the reasons are purely sexist. “The wage gap is not only measured according to the same work same hours same everything, that same is a component of the gap and that even though it is punishable by law there is a part of the gap that is explained by sexist differences, that is, for example, this 25% wage difference, there is a minimum of 8% that is explained only by the fact of being a woman. They pay you for the same position, same hours, same everything, except same salary,” he reinforces. According to “Chequeado”, work in private homes presents an informality that reaches 75%, which means that workers in this sector are in conditions of extreme precariousness with worse salaries than men. The female presence is also found in education, hotels and restaurants, other community, social and personal services where salaries are among the worst in the industry.” A large mass of Argentine workers who are in informal employment, there is no longer a law that counts, if you are informal you can not even denounce. This high gap is explained by the fact that women are inserted in jobs that are less valued by society both socially and economically. Then they earn less, no matter if they work the same hours. They are represented in low-paid jobs and are not in places of direction because it is difficult for them to ascend more, because they are the ones who dedicate themselves to unpaid domestic and care work, “explains the specialist.THE CARE, OUR KRYPTONITE LOVE AND SWEETNESS CULTURALLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE FEMININE WORLD IS NOT JUST ANOTHER SEXIST STEREOTYPE, IT IS THE PERFECT EXCUSE FOR THE SYSTEM TO MAKE CARE AND HOUSEHOLD WORK INVISIBLE. Entire decades where housewives could not even retire or grow professionally in other branches.  “Women have to dedicate fewer hours or be in less profitable jobs, because society does not consider, for example, overrepresentation in domestic work, in health, education, as something negative. All jobs that are related to care are poorly paid and invisible,” says Tundis.The Nobel Prize in Economics indicates Tundis, that the real problem in this gap, besides sexism, is care work and unpaid housework.” This recognition seems to me to be good, because first a woman is awarded, which is very only three women were awarded since there is the Nobel Prize in Economics and also serves as an argument before the people of freedom advances or whoever denies that this gap exists, “says Tundis.PARENTS OF THE WORLD, OÍDLhe public policies are key to solving this type of structural problems, But what policies can be applied to narrow the gap? “I think there are two important measures that should be taken, one is equal leave because women have three months and men, by law, only two days, generates discrimination. If you go to a job interview they ask you if you are going to be a mother or if you have thought about it, or they assume it directly and they do not hire you, “says the economist. In Argentina there is the project “Care in equality” that seeks, over time and among other policies, to extend licenses but in turn force companies to have gardens so that both they and they can use them when they have no one to leave their sons or daughters with. “Maternal and parental gardens from zero to four years are needed. They are needed because women who cannot afford a nanny or private care spaces do have to leave paid work.” Finally, the economist throws a line that sounds pillar when thinking about this problem: its denaturalization. “We must continue to insist on raising awareness so that it is no longer natural that we are women who take care not only of children, but also of people with disabilities and the elderly. In addition to the revaluation of paid jobs, for example, domestic service that is the most feminized of all, the worst payment in society and is 70% informal. ” 

Original source in Spanish