Gender Pay Gap, Women Struggle for Equal Pay

TIRANA, November 11

Women and men in Albania doing work of equal value don’t receive equal pay. The latest statistics from the Albanian Institute of Statistics show that wage disparity remains a harsh reality for women regardless of education or work experience.
‘The Structure of Earnings Survey, 2018’ unveils data on pay inequity by sectors of economy and education. A look at the data provided by the survey shows that unequal pay occurs when a woman works the same hours and does the same tasks as a man even though they have the same educational attainment.
While educational attainment could have been a factor behind wage disparity between men and women, this is not the case for Albania. Previous data from INSTAT confirm that the number of women who graduated from Albanian universities has been about two times higher compared to men for the last five years.
However, the survey shows that according to the educational attainment of employees, men with a tertiary education degree receive higher hourly earnings than women. Wages were Lek 420 for males and Lek 372 for women with the same educational attainment. That was even lower than the average hourly earnings per employee among people with higher education, which was Lek 392 per working hour.

About the survey

‘The Structure of Earnings survey’ was conducted in October 2018 in companies with more than ten (ten) employees. General findings show that the average hourly earnings per employee were Lek 293. The average monthly earnings per employee were Lek 50,735while the average annual earnings per employee during 2018 was Lek 595,099.
Sorted by gender, 50.6 percent of employees were males, and 49.4 percent were females.
Male employees prevailed in the Mining and quarrying industry by about 89.7 percent, while female employees outweighed in the Human health and social work activities sector by about 73.7percent.
The Gender pay gap on average hourly earnings was 6.81percent.
The Mining and quarrying industry showed the largest pay gap, at 34.9 percent, while the administrative and support service activities sector had the lowest pay gap, at 11.5 percent.
Moreover, the financial and insurance sector had the highest average hourly earnings per employee. However, the hourly earnings of men working in the sector were Lek 609 compared to women who earned Lek 571.

Read also: Gender Pay Gap: Men Paid 10.1% more than Women in 2019

Source: INSTAT