Thursday, 2 March 2023 is Singapore’s Pay Gap Day. Taking inspiration from similar events elsewhere in the world, such as the United States’ Equal Pay Day, Pay Gap Day symbolises how far into 2023 the median woman in Singapore must work to earn (in addition to her 2022 earnings) what the median man earned in 2022. We commemorating this year’s Pay Gap Day with a Give.Asia fundraising campaign called “Donate Your Gender Pay Gap”! This month-long campaign aims to raise a total of $14,400.

Donate Your Gender Pay Gap here!

Curious about the context and methodology behind this campaign? We’ve compiled this short list of Frequently Asked Questions to help!

FAQ 1: What is Singapore’s gender pay gap, and what causes it?

Singapore’s unadjusted gap was 14.4% in 2020, which means that full-time female employees aged 25 to 54 earned $0.856 for every $1.00 earned by their male counterparts.

The unadjusted gap compares the median wages of all full-time working men to the median wages of all full-time working women, aged 25-54. It does not control for “gender differences in productive characteristics between men and women such as age, education, occupation, industry, years of work experience, discrimination, etc” (MOM). The unadjusted gap is important, therefore, because it reflects the over-representation of men in higher-paying occupations and sectors, and the over-representation of women in lower-paying ones, largely due to occupational segregation, imbalance in caregiving responsibilities and gender discrimination.

Conversely, the adjusted pay gap was 4.3% in 2020. The adjusted pay gap attempts to capture differences in pay between women and men performing the same work, by controlling for “human capital and labour market factors”, i.e. characteristics such as race and ethnicity, level of education, work experience. It therefore only measures differences along one dimension—different pay for equivalent work—without capturing the many other differences in men and women’s employment circumstances that produce inequality.

Over a lifetime, the impact of this pay gap is significant. The median amount that a working woman would lose out on over the course of a 40-year career is almost $240,000. This inequality has a bearing on women’s ability to meet their needs financially and avoid ageing into poverty. According to CPF statistics, only 56% female active CPF members who turned 55 in 2018 hit the Basic Retirement Sum of $83,000 in their Retirement Accounts, as compared to 67% of male members.

Read more about the differences between the adjusted and unadjusted pay gaps here.

FAQ 2: Why “Pay Gap Day”?

Pay Gap Day takes inspiration from similar events in various parts of the world, such as the United States’ Equal Pay Day. The National Committee on Pay Equity declared the first U.S. Equal Pay Day in 1996, and it is commemorated on 14 March this year. Additionally, the European Union and the United Nations each observe their own Equal Pay Day. However, the term “Equal Pay Day” suggests that women receive equal pay for equal work, which disregards the reality that many women do not have the opportunity to work in the same roles as men. Therefore, we chose to call it “Pay Gap Day”. This acknowledges the existence of a pay gap while highlighting the need for equal opportunities in the workforce.

FAQ 3: Why is 2 March Singapore’s Pay Gap Day?

We calculated Pay Gap Day based off the unadjusted gender pay gap of 14.4%. Here’s the maths:

Let’s say a man (M) makes $10,000 per annum, or roughly equivalent to $27.40 per day. In this scenario, a woman (W) makes $8,560 per annum or $23.45 per day.

While M would work 365 days to earn his $10,000, W would work $10,000/$23.45, or approximately 426 days, to make $10,000. That is 61 days more than M.

That extra 61 days means W has to work from 1 Jan, 2022 – 2 March, 2023 to earn the same amount as M who works from 1 Jan – 31 Dec, 2022.

FAQ 4: Why do some people think the gender pay gap is a myth?

Sadly, the gender pay gap does exist. The Ministry of Manpower publishes the latest figures for Singapore here.

Despite this readily available data, various misconceptions (often spread by so-called “male rights activists”) persist about the gender pay gap. For example, a 2021 study we performed with Quilt.AI found that some social media users in Singapore justify the pay gap by framing it as unofficial compensation for National Service. Elsewhere, the pay gap has been attributed in part to differences in “personality traits and skills, psychological attributes, and choices of field of study”. This erroneously imagines a natural tendency of women to prefer lesser-paying jobs, and overlooks the systemic ways in which society devalues work traditionally performed by women.

FAQ 5: How is AWARE working to eradicate the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is a multifaceted issue inseparable from wider gender inequalities in every aspect of work and society. Therefore, we tackle it in various ways, including by advocating for the government to:

• Mandate that SGX-listed companies with more than 250 employees disclose pay gap data (disaggregated by gender and ethnicity) and the steps they are taking to address gaps
• Legislate the right for all workers to request flexible work arrangements
• Equalise maternity and paternity leave and make them mandatory
• Ensure that the upcoming anti-discrimination legislation addresses bias at all stages of the employment pipeline, including recruitment, promotion and pay
• Develop a labour framework on the rights and benefits of workers in non-standard forms of employment.
• Make greater efforts to encourage men to share women’s caregiving responsibilities

We also advocate for employers to:

• Stop indexing jobs by workers’ last-paid salaries, and instead index jobs by job scope
• Promote pay transparency at every level of the organisation, no matter the size of the company
• Invest in corporate training on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and unconscious bias