Gender pay gap despite women comprising 67% of global health & social care workforce, specialties still dominated by men
Photo for representation: iStock
A new report by the World Health Organization addressed the gender gap in global healthcare, highlighting that while women comprise 67 per cent of the global health and social care workforce, they face an average pay gap of 24 per cent compared to men.
Women in low- or middle-income countries could be $9 trillion better off if their pay and access to paid work were equal to that of men, the Fair share for health and care report released March 12, 2024 noted.
Read more: Women’s labour force participation in India among the world’s lowest: Oxfam
Pay gaps limit women’s investment in their family and community, which is where they are likely to reinvest. Globally, on average, 90 per cent of women’s earnings were directed towards their families’ well-being, compared to only 30–40 per cent of men’s, the report noted.
The report added that women are also not adequately represented on decision-making tables. Women are overrepresented in lower-status roles, comprising the majority of nurses and midwives. They are, however, underrepresented in leadership roles.
Medical specialties are still dominated by men. Women made up 25 per cent to 60 per cent of doctors, but between 30 per cent and 100 per cent of nursing staff across 35 countries with available data, the report said.
Unpaid health work adds value to health contributions, and 76 per cent of unpaid care activities are performed by women. When public healthcare services tighten, unpaid care in households tends to increase, as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more: Sub-Saharan Africa might need nearly a century to achieve gender parity: Global Gender Gap Report
“In India, women spent around 73 per cent of their total daily working time (that is, the combined average time spent on unpaid and paid work recorded through national daily time-use surveys) on unpaid work, compared to men who spent around only 11 per cent of their daily working time on unpaid work,” the report added.
Women from low and middle-income countries and marginalised communities provide significant amounts of unpaid work in a caregiver role. Unpaid work doubled during the pandemic, relative to men, as caring for chronic diseases had to be shifted to homes.
In the United Kingdom, nearly 4.5 million people took on unpaid work during COVID-19, 59 per cent of whom were women, with nearly 3 million working simultaneously.
Women in healthcare disproportionately experienced higher levels of gender-based violence. According to some estimates, a quarter of workplace violence across all sectors of the globe occurs in healthcare. At least half of all employees in the healthcare sector have reported experiencing violence at some point in the workplace.
In the Republic of Korea, 64 per cent of nurses reported verbal abuse and 42 per cent reported threats of violence; in Rwanda, 39 per cent of health workers surveyed reported at least one form of workplace violence; and in Nepal, 42 per cent of women health workers surveyed reported sexual harassment, the report emphasised.
The lack of non-standard forms of employment and contracting in the field of nursing has compounded gender dynamics. The report recommends strengthening labour rights and anti-discrimination laws in this regard.
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