World Economy
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Women a Distant Minority Among Top Earners

The gender pay gap follows women all the way into retirement.
The gender pay gap follows women all the way into retirement.

Women account for a fraction of the richest people in eight of the world’s wealthiest countries and the gender gap gets wider the higher the income bracket, a study by the London School of Economics showed.

Using tax data from Spain, Denmark, Italy, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Australia and Norway, researchers found that women account for less than a third of the wealthiest 10% of the society, IOL reported.

They make up less than a quarter of the wealthiest 1% and less than a sixth of the top-earning 0.1%, the report said.

The gender pay gap follows women all the way into retirement.

Alessandra Casarico, a professor at Bocconi University in Italy and co-author of the report, said although more women were working, few of them reach the top in terms of income.

“Women now make up more of the top income groups,” Casarico said in a statement. “But they still are a distinct minority and they become rarer the higher one climbs.”

Almost a third of Spain’s wealthiest 10% are women—the highest proportion among the countries analyzed in the report. Spain also had the most women in the wealthiest 1% and 0.1%.

By contrast, Norway had the widest gender gap with women making up only about a fifth of the wealthiest 10%.

Last year, on average women earned about half as much as men did, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Gender Gap report. It said at about $11 000 per year, women’s annual earnings in 2015 matched what men earned in 2006.

In a separate study published earlier this month, researchers found that women ask for a pay rise as often as men, but men are 25% more likely to get it when they ask.

Researchers said analyzing the salary gaps was important but did not give the full picture.

The study also looked at other sources of income, such as investments, and found that investments accounted for a bigger share of women’s wealth in the countries surveyed.

However Casarico said: “In the old days, the rich were those with property. They have been replaced by CEOs and entrepreneurs, among whom women are not well represented.”

Britain’s gender pay gap gets wider among top earners, suggesting that the “glass ceiling” in terms of income in the UK has become more apparent.

In the UK, only 9% of Britain’s top earners, who earn £456,000 or more, were women.

 

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