Equal Pay Day: Men still earn more in 40 of the 100 most common jobs

November 14, is Equal Pay Day in the Netherlands - the moment when women effectively stop being paid for their work for the rest of the year because of the wage gap across genders. Men still earn more than women in 40 of the 100 most common jobs, research by MKB Servicedesk and Van Spaendonck Groep showed.

Exactly when Equal Pay Day falls differs per function. For female mechanics in the technical sector, this day falls on November 4, while women working sales in retail start working for free on December 19.

In 52 of the 100 most common jobs, men and women earn about the same. So there is no Equal Pay Day for these positions. For medical assistants, one of only eight jobs where is the salary higher for women than for men, Equal Pay Day for male medical assistants falls on November 15.

According to the researchers, a large part of the wage gap in gross income is caused by men working more hours than women on average - 37 hours per week and 29 hours per week, respectively. “This pattern has hardly changed since 2018,” the researchers said. “And the difference in hours increases with age.”

This is largely due to typical gender roles. Women are still more likely to give up working time to care for children and, later, for ailing family members. Among young adults, aged 22 to 27, men work 9.6 percent more hours. In the 33-38 age group the difference increases to almost 28 percent. In the 64-68 age group, the difference is 46.3 percent.

The modal income for women is 12 percent lower per month than for men. “This difference is not caused by the number of hours worked, but by the overrepresentation of men in better-paid professions,” the researchers said.

The share of women in management positions has remained stable at 16-17 percent since 2018 and the pay gap persists. “In positions such as development director, only 5 percent of employees are women, with a pay gap of sometimes more than 25 percent.”

The researchers looked at over 1.2 million anonymized monthly payslips from 145,000 Dutch companies for their study.