Glass ceiling still exists: Women in IT earn 34pc less in India than their male colleagues

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The latest ‘Monster Salary Index’ (MSI) indicates that the gender pay gap in India stands at 27 percent where men earned a median gross hourly salary of Rs. 288.68, whereas women earned only a median gross salary of Rs. 207.85 per hour.

The highest gender pay gap was recorded in the Manufacturing sector at 34.9%. IT sector is second in the rank with 34% pay gap. The lowest gender pay gap was recorded in the BFSI and Transport, logistics, communication, equally standing at 17.7%.

The low proportion of women working in this sector can be the main cause of the huge gender pay gap existing in the IT sector.

In median, men earn Rs 360.9 per hour whereas women earn only Rs 239.6 per hour. The big gender pay gap is also caused by the fact that while men’s wages have increased a bit from 2013-2015, wages of women have recorded a significant decrease by Rs 55.

Source: WageIndicator Foundation

The median gross hourly wage in the IT sector hasn’t changed in 2013-2014. In both years, it reached Rs 346.4. However, in Q1-Q3/2015, it has slightly decreased to Rs 337.3, what is surprising considering the fact that the IT sector is a quickly expanding one and IT specialists are now sought by companies in nearly all economic sectors.

Employees in supervisory positions earn in total much more than employees in non-supervisory positions (Rs 461.9 per hour vs. Rs 254.0 per hour). While the wages of supervisors have slightly risen during this period, the wages of non-supervisors have slightly fallen.

As the overall sample of females is very low in the IT sector, the yearly breakdown of female wages by supervisory position is not available in the report. However, the gender pay gap for non-supervisors (28%) is lower than for supervisors (42%).

The size of the company does matter:

The salary varies with the size of companies as well. For instance, employees working in companies with less than 0-50 earned only in median Rs 202.1 per hour, whereas employees working in the largest companies with 5000+ employees earned nearly twice that much (Rs 393.5 per hour). While wages in the smaller companies have decreased slightly in the three years, the wages have still been slightly increasing in the large companies.

The wage structure of domestic companies and global companies vary to a large extent as well. While employees working in domestic companies earn only Rs 261.2 per hour, employees of fully or partially foreign owned companies earn 88% more (Rs 490.8 per hour).

Job Satisfaction:

The MSI report further indicates that while only 52.7 percent of employees are satisfied with their pay; a significant 75 percent are satisfied with their job. This clearly highlights how job satisfaction is not necessarily associated with satisfaction of salary.

In the IT services sector, more than 80% of employees have reported satisfaction in respect to the relationship with their colleagues, working hours and the relationship with their superiors. However, the least satisfying thing of the IT sector employees is again the wage (58%).

But the number of employees being satisfied with their life as a whole is rising, from 63.6% in 2013 to 69.6% in Q1-Q3/2015. It is mainly because the good amount of wages IT specialists earn.