Women paid 16 per cent less than men: Report

Melbourne: A new global report has found that women workers are paid 16 per cent less than their male counterparts across the world.

The International Trade Union Confederation report on pay equity, which focuses on the different earnings of women and men in 63 countries around the world, found the average difference between women's and men's pay is 15.6 per cent.

The report found most positive results in Europe, Oceania and Latin America, while Asia and Africa showed the biggest differences.

In the Middle East country of Bahrain, women are actually paid 40 per cent more than men - perhaps because of the very low numbers of women in the workforce.

And if Bahrain is excluded from the data, the global gender pay gap would be 16.5 per cent.

The report also showed that pay gap tends to be higher in female-dominated work environments such as education and health.

"This may be due to the fact that men working in female-dominated work environments more often than women hold managerial positions that are better paid than the majority of the jobs in these sectors,'' News.com.au quoted the report, as stating.

According to the report, women tend to earn significantly less than men in the mining industry, utilities sector and the financial services sector.

The study further showed that there is also a large pay difference in the not-for-profit sector and pay equality is closer in public administration and other community, social and personal services jobs.

It also found that educated women are not necessarily paid wages like men.

In some cases, the difference in fact rises with the level of education achieved.

"In the UK and the Netherlands the gap rises with the level of education, particularly at the level of tertiary education,'' the report said.

In the report, it was also shown that women working part-time do not automatically earn less than men, with the reverse true in most countries.

Sharan Burrow, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president, said that the report has disclosed the extent of discrimination women still faced around the globe and she has suggested that collective bargaining was the best way to close the pay equity gap.