The gender pay gap in Taiwan showed no improvement last year, with women earning NT$283 per hour on average, or 85.4 percent of the average hourly income of men, the Ministry of Labor said on Thursday.
The ministry has conducted an annual survey of the gender pay gap since 2002, with the calculations based on profession, seniority, education level and job performance, and include overtime, the ministry said.
Women would have to work for 54 extra days to earn the same amount as men, placing the equal payday on Feb. 23, the ministry said.
The equal payday is a symbolic date indicating how far into the following year women would have to work to compensate for wages lost to gender-based income inequality.
Following revisions to statistical methodology, the 2016 gender pay gap of 52 days was increased to 54 days, indicating that the gender income equality did not improve or worsen in the past two years, it said.
Overall, the statistical trend suggests that the gender pay gap has been narrowing over the past decade, the ministry said, adding that the gender difference in income had shrunk by 4 percentage points, or the equivalent of 15 work days.
The nation’s gender pay gap last year was smaller than that of Japan (32.3 percent) and the US (18.9 percent), while the latest available figure for South Korea was 34.1 percent in 2017, the ministry said.
However, South Korea made the most progress among the four nations in narrowing the gender pay gap over the past decade, with the figure shrinking by 5.1 percent, compared with Japan’s 4.1 percent and the US’ 1.2 percent, the ministry said.
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