INTERACTIVE: Good news, bad news in gender pay gap

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Thanks to Covid-19, women are earning more to narrow the pay gap in male-dominated “labour-intensive” roles, but they have been left further behind in the upper echelons of the job market.

Although most men still earned more than their female counterparts, women’s salaries have risen in five low-paying jobs – elementary occupations, craft and related trades, service and sales, and machine operators and assemblers – according to the Statistics Department.

Women also narrowed the gap in the category of technicians and associate professionals, where the salary is more than RM3,000.

"The mean monthly salaries and wages for female employees continued to increase as the restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19 were relaxed gradually as compared with the full lockdown," the department said.

The highest increase in median salary involved women working in elementary occupations, which at a 33.4% rise made it the only position where they earned more than men in 2021, edging ahead to a 1.5% difference at RM1,611.

On average, the median salary for women in 2021 was RM2,145, with men at RM2,315, or a 7.3% difference.

Meanwhile, the median monthly salary of female workers in the craft and related trades field has scaled up by 31.9% to RM1,692 while female plant and machine operators and assemblers' median salary have increased by 15.7% to RM1,692.

Women in the skilled agricultural, forestry, livestock and fishery category had a 7% increase in salary to RM1,530 in 2021 compared with RM1,436 in 2019, while women service and sales workers' median salary went up by 3.5%.

The pay rise has also closed the gap between the genders in 2021 compared with 2019.

Women in craft and related trades recorded a 7.7% pay gap in 2021, compared with 32.9% in 2021, while plant and machine operators and assemblers came in at a 10.6% pay gap, compared with 29.3% in 2019.

For women in the skilled agricultural, forestry, livestock and fishery category, the pay gap was at 12.1% compared with 22.46% in 2019, and service and sales workers at 17.6% compared with 25% in 2019.

Technicians and associate professionals were the only higher paying jobs which saw a smaller gender pay gap, improving slightly from 5% in 2019 to 3.4% in 2021 as women saw a pay raise of 1.15% last year.

In comparison, male technicians and associate professionals earned 0.54% less in 2021 at RM3,290, compared with 2019.

The managerial role was the only male-dominated job where the gender pay gap has widened, with female managers recording a higher pay cut of 28.7% compared with male managers at 16.9%.

Female managers in 2021 earned 18% less than their male colleagues, compared with 4.6% in 2019.

The pay gap for women in higher paying jobs of above RM2,000 and where they dominate the workforce, such as professionals and clerical support workers, had also widened.

Women working as clerical support workers, where they make up 68.5% of the industry, recorded the largest gender pay gap at 25.3% in 2021 compared with 10.5% in 2019.

The median salary for women in this role decreased by 15% last year while their male colleagues’ median salary improved by 1.8%.

The pay gap of women professionals has also slightly widened as they earned 16.7% less than their male colleagues in 2021, compared with 14% in 2019.