Gender Pay Gap 2023: Are women getting equal opportunities in Tech?

livemint.com:

Ernst and Young. Pahilajani is the only woman among her team members, with a ratio of 9:1 (Men to Woman). Women are taking the stride every day in their careers.

However, there is a huge scope for improvement in the work environment for them. There is an unadjusted gender pay gap in the IT sector in 2023, according to Aon's latest estimates, as reported by the Economic Times. There is a gender pay gap of 28 per cent to 30 per cent as women climb up the corporate ladder, while for junior management, it is 8 per cent to 10 per cent, the report added.

However, the data suggested an improvement in the gender pay gap varied between 34 per cent and 35 per cent during the Covid-19 pandemic, as per the report. In line with the global trend, women in India faced a decline in non-inclusive behaviours in 2023 than in 2022. The instance fell by almost 10 percentage points to 48 per cent, according to '2023 Women @ Work Report' by Deloitte.

LiveMint spoke with working women and experts to understand the current scenario, outlook and reason behind the improvement. "Women, on average, are paid about 20 per cent less than men globally," said Preeti Rawat, Professor - HR, K J Somaiya Institute of Management, quoting an ILO study from 2018. Explaining the myriads of reasons behind the gap, Rawat said, "Globally, the gap widens for women of colour, immigrant women and young mothers (classic 'motherhood penalty').

Personally, "I have not seen much bias now, but I do feel maternity leave and a gap might be a reason for a gap," said Pahilajani. "The gender gap in tech begins much earlier than a job, i.e. in education, with only ~20 per cent of engineering students being women," said Karthik Sridharan, Co-Founder and CEO of Flexiple.com.