Gender pay gap in Turkey: Women earn a third less than men

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Today is September 18 International Equal Pay Day. On this occasion, the Research Center of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK-AR) has released a "Report on Pay Gap," documenting the situation in Turkey. The report of the confederation has once again manifested that the picture of gender inequality in work life has got grimmer.

Based on the 2019 Income and Living Conditions statistics that the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) shared with the public on September 11, 2020, the DİSK-AR report has documented the gender inequality and pay gap between men and women in the country.

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Men earn 31.4 percent more than women

According to the report, the annual labor income of men is 31.4 percent higher than that of women. In other words, women earn a third less than their male counterparts, but it depends on the work type.

That is, self-employed men bring 77.3 percent more labor income than women while male daily wage workers bring 85.8 percent more.

Moreover, while male wage workers earn 20.7 percent than more women, male employers earn 20.2 percent more than women employers.

The report has also noted that even though the pay gap between men and women has been shrinking over years, it is still an important problem.

Accordingly, the average per capita income of a man was 9 thousand 297 lira in 2016 while it was 6 thousand 453 for women.

In 2019, the average per capita income of men was calculated as 37 thousand 72 lira while that of women was 27 thousand 214 lira. In other words, while the gender gap in average per capita income was 44 percent in 2019, this rate was 31 percent in 2019.

Also, the average income of male daily wage earners was 16 thousand 784 lira in 2019 while it was 9 thousand 33 lira for women. It shows that men working for daily wages earned 85.8 percent more than women.

Based on these figures, the report has concluded that "the biggest pay gap is between the men and women who work for daily wages."

'Gap between women and men has widened'

Further in the report, the Research Center of the DİSK has also shared the following information about pay gap in Turkey:

In 2019, the average annual income of male employers was 97 thousand 244 lira, it was 80 thousand 89 lira for women. In the same year, the average annual income of self-employed men was 29 thousand 116 lira, the average income of self-employed women was 29 thousand 116 lira in a year.

That being the case, self-employed men earned 77.3 percent more than self-employed women in the year 2019.

In 2006, the annual income of wage earning women was 8 thousand 262 lira on average. It increased by 263 percent to 29 thousand 968 lira in 2019.

In the same period, the average annual income of wage earning men increased by 290 percent from 9,268 lira to 36 thousand 167 lira in 2019. In other words, in the 2006-2019 period, the increase in wage earning men's income was higher than that of women.

In 2007, men were earning 10.9 percent more than women. This rate increased to 20.7 percent in 2019. The gap between wage earning men and women has widened. (HA/SD)