Wage gap in Peru: it is widening and it would now take almost 70 years to close, according to the IPE

under the International Women’s Daycommemorated on March 8, the Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE) reviewed the latest figures from the labor market and updated the time it would take to close the pay gap in the country. These are some of the main challenges that remain to be faced in the country in order to achieve a gender equality.

And the current results show bad news: it has been expanded and it would now take almost seven decades to close. Previously, it was estimated that it would take about 50 years.

According Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE), in the urban area of ​​the country, the Real wages of the womeni.e. the amount that discounts the effect of the inflation and reflects true purchasing power, has flattened over the past year. This situation occurred in the context of a decelerating Peruvian economy and high rates of inflation.

“In detail, an urban worker experiences a decrease in his real wage from S/1,466 in 2019 to S/1,258 in 2022, which equates to a loss of almost S/200,” they noted about of their estimates. In 2021, their real salary was 1,259 S/.

However, in the men’s sector, the evolution was different. The real wages of the male population in the year 2022 recorded a growth of 3.6% compared to 2021, according to information from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) collected by the PEI.

From this information, the Peruvian Institute of Economics calculated that now men’s real wages is 30% higher than that of women. This figure is the highest in four years, representing an increase in the gender wage gap to levels even higher than those recorded before the pandemic.

A closer way to view this notable difference is that for every S/1 of income a man received in 2022, a woman received S/0.70, estimates the IPE.

“With growth weaker than women’s salary over the past three years following the pandemic, the time it would take to completely eliminate the gender wage gap in Peru has increased from 50 to 70 years, according to IPE projections. In this regard, women’s wages have fallen from an annual growth rate of 5.7% between 2004 and 2019 to only 1.0% during the period 2020-2022,” they added.