The Monster Salary Index, which surveyed over 2000 working women on Monster India’s database, has quantified the gender pay gap in India, and said that while women earned Rs. 259.8 as the median gross hourly salary in 2016, men earned Rs. 345.8 – a stark difference of nearly 25%. 

The silver lining though, is the fact that the gap has shrunk 2% points since 2015, when it was 27.2%. Furthermore, the gender pay gap in the Manufacturing sector was 29.9% - the highest across all sectors – yet, it also witnessed a drop of 5% points from last year. Other sectors performed as follows: 

• Legal and Market Consultancy and Business Activity (27.5%)
• IT (25.8%)
• Healthcare, Caring services and Social Services (22.6%)
• BFSI (21.5%)
• Education and Research (14.7%)
• Construction and Technical Consultancy (11.8%)
• Transport, Logistics and Communications (5.2%)

Other important findings of the report are as follows:

• Contribution to family income was the top reason (37.9%) as to why women worked, and 68.5% of the respondents said that even if gender pay parity is a priority for the top management, there is no real improvement in the situation on ground, and much of the sentiment remains on paper. 
• 36.8% of the respondents said that their organisation needs to put in more effort to focus on gender diversity, and 31.9% believed that structured gender diversity initiatives do not help in changing perceptions. 
• 13.1% felt that the absence of proper child care is one of the top challenges for women professionals, and maternity leaves and child care sabbaticals could be attributed as factors to the fact that over 97% of the respondents have an experience of 1-10 years. 
• 53.9% of the respondents were found to be between happy and partially happy at their work, but 62.4% felt that their male counterparts got more promotion and career-advancement opportunities.
• Safety was an essential factor for 78.1% of the respondents while choosing a job and 66.4% considered night-shift jobs to be unsafe. Additionally, 62.7% believed that their organisation should provide short term self-defence classes.

Respondents from Delhi-NCR constituted 15% of the total respondents, followed by Mumbai and Bangalore at 12% each. Non-metros cities saw a participation of 35%. Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, APAC & Middle-East, Monster.com, said, “In India, the gender pay gap story holds true and the overall gap across India Inc. is at 25 percent. This primarily is a manifestation of the underlying diversity challenges that organisations currently face. There is a dire need for tangible initiatives to bridge this pay gap with removing structural impediments to women's growth providing access to skills training, jobs; and decision-making.”

The survey is very timely, as 8th March happens to be International Women’s Day, and will undoubtedly evoke a lot of conversation about women employees, gender parity, pay gap and glass ceilings etc. It would do organisations in India, and around the world, good to pay heed to the findings of the study and make correctional interventions that aim to remove any gender-related roadblocks in their work culture – and a good starting point would be to ensure pay parity.