In around thirty years, wage inequalities between women and men have declined significantly, but there is still some way to go.
For equal working hours, female employees in the private sector earned on average 14.9% less than men in 2022, according to an INSEE study published Tuesday, a few days before International Women's Rights Day.
Overall, the average salary income of women in the private sector is 23.5% lower than that of men (19,980 euros net per year compared to 26,110 for men).
This gap is partly explained by a lower volume of work, with women being employed less often during the year and more part-time.
But even for the same working hours, the average salary of women is lower than that of men: the gap rises to 14.9%.
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In 2022, the average salary income of women is 23.5% lower than that of men in the private sector.
For a comparable position, the full-time equivalent salary gap is 4%.
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“Wage differences are mainly explained by the gender distribution of professions,” notes the institute, which even mentions “professional segregation”.
Women do not in fact occupy the same type of job and do not work in the same sectors and same companies as men, and have less access to the most remunerative positions.
For example, they are under-represented among IT research and development engineers, positions that are on average well paid.
Less than a quarter of women among the top 1% paid
INSEE notes, however, that the pay gap has narrowed over time, since in 1995, the rate was 22.1%.
The growing share of women executives, which rose from 23% in 1995 to 37% in 2022, has a lot to do with it.
But overall, female workers remain under-represented among the highest earners.
In 2022, women held 41.8% of jobs in the private sector in full-time equivalent, but this proportion is however “significantly higher among low-wage employees”, notes INSEE.
It reaches “up to 54.6% for salary levels around 1,340 euros net monthly”, then decreases as salaries increase.
Few women have access to the best pay slips: among the 1% of best-paid employees, their share is only 22.8%.
Also read: Why do men flee professions where there are “too many” women?
When the positions are comparable, i.e. an identical profession within the same establishment, the full-time equivalent salary gap is reduced, however, to 4% (compared to 4.3% in 2021), indicates INSEE.
The study considers that this result cannot "be interpreted as a measure of salary discrimination in companies", since certain characteristics such as seniority or experience, which can affect remuneration, are not taken into account. account in this work.
Finally, INSEE notes that the income gaps are “even more marked” between parents: “mothers have working hours but also full-time equivalent salaries that are significantly lower than fathers, and the gaps increase with the number of children ".
In 2021, the full-time equivalent pay gap between men and women reached 29.5% between mothers and fathers who have three or more children.
In question, “the drop in salary observed after birth” but also the “permanently slowed careers of mothers”.
At the same time, in a study also published on Tuesday, the General Directorate of Administration and Civil Service (DGAFP) reported a pay gap of 9.1% in 2023 between men and women among civil servants. ministries, with identical working hours.
“For ten years, this gap has decreased” since it was 12.6% in 2013, she nevertheless underlined.
Across the entire civil service, which has 5.7 million agents, the most recent data dates from 2021 and shows a gap of 11.3% between the average net salary of men ( 2,622 euros) and women (2,326 euros), for an equivalent amount of work.