The First quarter data from the 2022 Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES) reveals that women in Ghana earn an average of 34.2 percent less than men.
This finding is significant as it coincides with the 2023 International Equal Pay Day, which is observed annually on September 18 to promote the attainment of equal pay for work of equal value worldwide. The estimated gender wage gap is adjusted for various factors, including age, years of work experience, education level, occupation, industry, employment sector, and region of residence.
The GSS data further indicates that the gender wage gap is lowest among paid workers with tertiary education, where women earn 12.7 percent less than their male counterparts. Conversely, the wage gap is highest among workers with basic education (60.1 percent) and those with no education (54.0 percent).
The gender wage gap is also highest in the private informal sector, where women earn 58.7 percent less than men, followed by the private formal sector with a wage gap of 29.9 percent. However, in the public sector, women earn 10.5 percent less than men, which represents the lowest gender wage gap.
Moreover, the data reveals that among the population aged 36 to 60 years, women earn 33.4 percent less than men, while the wage differential is 3.0 percentage points higher for the age group of 15 to 35 years, where women earn 30.7 percent less than their male counterparts. These findings underscore the need for concerted efforts to address the gender wage gap in Ghana and promote gender equality in the workplace.
Ashantibiz
