As of 2021, the gender wage gap was 11.9% on average across the OECD. This means that, on average, a woman working full-time makes around 88 cents for every dollar or euro a full-time working man makes (at median earnings). 

Public policies to address the gender wage gap must take a broad perspective, encouraging girls and young women to study in diverse fields; promoting the use of paid parental leave among fathers; ensuring the adequate supply of good-quality and affordable childcare so parents can work; and implementing equal pay legislation and pay transparency initiatives.

Though many countries have improved family support in recent years, the risk of gendered patterns in the use of parental leave and care for children at home remains. After the arrival of children, women tend to take longer leaves of absence than men, and are more likely to work part-time. These shifts contribute to differences in wage growth between women and men – the so-called 'motherhood penalty.'

One way to close this gap is to focus on men: if fathers are given non-transferable rights to parental leave, their leave uptake can increase significantly and they could spend more time caring for their children. One illustrative example is Iceland, where men’s share of all parental leave taken was just 3% prior to the introduction of mother and father quotas in the early 2000s; that figure is now about 45%.

Beyond leave taken around childbirth, the high cost of centre-based childcare in many OECD countries acts as a barrier for mothers to return to full-time work when children are very young. Policies to promote affordable, formal childcare are key to keeping both fathers and mothers in the workforce.

Gender pay gap reporting can help address pay disparities between women and men, as it illuminates pay gaps and can pressure employers to change pay practices.

Today just over half (55%) of national governments in the OECD require private sector employers to analyse their pay data and report gender-disaggregated pay information regularly to stakeholders like workers, the government, and the public.

In many of these countries, pay reporting requirements are embedded within comprehensive, mandatory, equal pay auditing processes that often require follow-up action to address inequalities. Yet the success of current and future pay transparency systems critically depends on their design.