# 3 november9h22: pay inequality between women and men is on the rise again – archyworldys

According to the feminist collective Les Glorieuses, since Wednesday, November 3 at 9:22 a.m., French women have been working “for free”: they are no longer paid for the remaining 16.5% of the year, according to a calculation based on the differences in earnings with men published by Eurostat in 2021 (with data from 2019). The communication of this symbolic date, accompanied on social networks by the hashtag # 3novembre9h22, serves above all to raise awareness about pay inequalities, even if its methodology can be discussed.

What emerges this year is that the gender pay gap, which had narrowed slightly from 2018 to 2020 (from 16.7% to 15.5% gap) rebounded in 2021 , in part due to the Covid-19 crisis, a phenomenon observed across Europe. Not only, the modest progress made in recent years towards parity has been erased, but in addition women “Who teleworked also took on more tasks, especially with children”.

Different calculations but the same observation: the gap remains

The method of calculating the Les Glorieuses collective is based on data from the European statistics body Eurostat, but other institutions are advancing different figures. Thus, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concludes that there is a 11.5% in 2018 in France (against 16.7% for Eurostat the same year).

The National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), for its part, calculated a difference of 14.1% on average in 2017, specifying that the pay gap has decreased moderately since the start of the 21st century^e century (around 0.4 percentage point per year on average).

These digit shifts can be explained by different calculation methods. To calculate the income gap between women and men, INSEE and Eurostat use the gross hourly wage. A technique which makes it possible not to take into account the payment of bonuses, the remuneration varying according to the performances or the seasonal payments. The OECD, for its part, calculates the difference between the median salary of men and women. In any case, these methods smooth the results, because they do not take into account level of education, experience in the labor market or type of job.

But whatever thermometer you use, the differences remain significant. Eurostat provides some explanations: thus, the fact that “The sectors in which women constitute the majority of workers [la santé ou l’éducation] have lower salary levels than those observed in the more predominantly male sectors ”, like finance or IT. In addition, women are also less represented in positions of responsibility, the most remunerative.