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Equal Pay Day, celebrated on 18 September, represents the longstanding efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value.

It further builds on the United Nations’ commitment to human rights and against all forms of discrimination, including discrimination against women and girls. Across all regions, women are paid less than men, with the gender pay gap estimated at around 20 per cent globally. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls continue to be held back owing to the persistence of historical and structural unequal power relations between women and men, poverty and inequalities and disadvantages in access to resources and opportunities that limit women’s and girls’ capabilities. Progress on narrowing that gap has been slow. While equal pay for men and women has been widely endorsed, applying it in practice has been difficult. In order to ensure that no one is left behind, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) address the need to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.

Furthermore, the SDGs promote decent work and economic growth by seeking full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value. Mainstreaming of a gender perspective is crucial in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Achieving equal pay is an important milestone for human rights and gender equality. It takes the effort of the entire world community and more work remains to be done. The United Nations, including UN Women and the International Labour Organization (ILO) invites Members states and civil society, women’s and community-based organizations and feminist groups, as well as businesses and workers’ and employers’ organizations, to promote equal pay for work of equal value and the economic empowerment of women and girls. Ingrained inequalities cause the gender pay gap. Women, especially migrant women, are overrepresented in the informal sector, leading to low-paying, unsafe working conditions without social benefits.

Women also perform three more hours of daily care work than men, including household tasks and caring for children and the elderly. The motherhood penalty exacerbates pay inequity, with working mothers facing lower wages, particularly as the number of children they have increased. Gender stereotypes, discriminatory hiring practices, and promotion decisions also contribute to pay inequalities. The fight for equal pay and pay equity is urgent as income inequality harms women the most. In the United States, Black women earn only 63.7 cents, Native women 59 cents, and Latinas 57 cents for every dollar that white men earn. It is important to address underpaid and undervalued jobs in the care sector, where women make up 67% of workers. The Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) is led by the ILO, UN Women, and OECD. The Coalition’s goal is to achieve equal pay for women and men everywhere. By bringing together a diverse set of actors with different areas of focus and expertise, EPIC supports governments, employers, workers, and their organizations to make concrete and coordinated progress towards this goal. EPIC is currently the only multi-stakeholder partnership working to reduce the gender pay gap at the global, regional and national levels.

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