Statistician proffers solutions for bridging gender pay gap in Ghana

Anthony Oduro-Denkyira, a statistician at the Ghana Statistical Service, has outlined several strategies for reducing the gender wage gap in Ghana.

Speaking on PM Express on JoyNews, he highlighted that, particularly in the informal private sector, women’s social obligations, such as parenthood among others, have an impact on the quantity of work they do and the wages they get.

Mr Oduro-Denkyira said “it’s so clear that in the informer sector, where they don’t enjoy social security benefits, a woman then would want to take up jobs she could be able to do for lesser hours. When that happens, because that woman doesn’t enjoy things such as security, unlike the public sector, she will work for fewer hours, she’ll be paid less, and obviously will have an impact on her salary.”

According to the statistician, distributing childcare and elder care responsibilities equally among men and women will encourage more women to apply for higher-paying employment.

On other solutions, he stated that “companies should have policies that will work on a flexible working time and there’s a need for companies to have programs that would train women when they go to child care.”

Additionally, he said that more women should be encouraged to pursue management jobs because there are more males in these positions, which might lead to salary discrepancies.

This comes after the Ghana Statistical Service reported that women earn 34.2% less than males among paid workers in the nation.

In a press statement released to celebrate International Equal Pay Day, GSS stated that “the gender wage gap is lowest among paid workers with tertiary education or more where women earn 12.7 per cent less than their male counterparts. The wage gap is highest among workers with basic education (60.1%) followed by workers with no education (54.0%).”

“When comparing sectors of employment, the gender wage gap is highest in the private informal sector where women are paid 58.7 per cent less than men. This is followed by the private formal sector with a wage gap of 29.9 per cent. The public sector, where women are paid 10.5 per cent less than men has the lowest gender wage gap.”

Alex Frimpong, the CEO of the Ghana Employers Association, asserts that gender wage differences in Ghana’s commercial and governmental sectors are minimal to nonexistent.

He also claimed during his appearance on the program that firms hire everyone who can complete the task at hand and pay them equally, regardless of gender.

“For the formal sector, when an employee needs to do a piece of work, the issue is who can do the job and at what rate is the person going to get paid for that job? So the issue of gender disparities more or less does not apply in the private sector,” Mr Frimpong said.

“And I can think too for many public sector jobs, there’s no discrimination in terms of paying for men and women in many organizations,” he added.