“Women earn only half as much as men over their lifetimes.” This is the headline of a new study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, which shows that the inequalities between women and men in the labor market are greater over the course of their entire working lives than previously assumed.
Calculated over their entire working lives, women earn about half of what men earn in terms of employment income. In absolute figures, women in West Germany achieve an expected average lifetime employment income of around 830,000 euros (in 2015 prices), while men can expect an average of around 1.5 million euros.
The gap in lifetime employment income, the so-called #GenderLifetimeEarningsGap, is 45 percent in West Germany and 40 percent in East Germany for those currently in their mid-30s.
These results come from a study conducted by a research team led by Prof. Dr. Timm Bönke from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) and the Free University (FU) Berlin.
Manuela Barišić, labor market expert at the Bertelsmann Foundation, explains: “The currently used measure, the Gender Pay Gap, conceals how large the income gap between men and women actually is.”
What could be solutions to counteract the Gender Pay Gap, or better yet, the Gender Lifetime Earnings Gap?
Posted by Natascha Hoffner, Founder & CEO of herCAREER, WiWo columnist, LinkedIn TOP Voice 2020, W&V 2019 – 100 Köpfe
published on LinkedIn on 06.06.2020
