2026-09-15 · percent of men's earnings

Women earn less than men in every region

Gap sizes differ — no country has closed it entirely.

Equal pay for work of equal value has been an ILO standard since 1951. More than seven decades later, women still earn 84% of what men do — a global pay gap of roughly 16% that shows up in every region, and that no country has closed entirely. Occupational segregation, discrimination in pay and access to jobs, and a lasting motherhood wage penalty keep it in place.

1 cell = 0.1 percent of men's earnings (0.1% of global gender pay ratio) · 1,000 cells

Context

The figures come from the International Labour Organization, the UN specialized agency for the world of work. Its research finds wide variation in the gap's size from country to country — the gap shows up everywhere, but its depth differs.

The ILO points to a mix of causes: differences in educational attainment, occupational segregation, and discrimination in pay and in access to particular types of jobs. Motherhood brings a wage penalty of its own, one that can persist across a woman's entire working life.

Part of the gap is unexplained — the structural remainder left once measurable factors are accounted for. The ILO promotes pay transparency legislation and its Equal Remuneration Convention as tools for member states working to progressively reduce and eliminate gender pay gaps.

ILO global gender pay gap ~16%, rounded.