Discrepancy between men’s and women’s salaries will decrease by 10% until 2015

The discrepancy between men’s and women’s salaries will diminish by 10% until 2015, according to the national indicators forming part of the Millennium Development Goals, which were reviewed by the Government in 2007, Info-Prim Neo reports. The women’s average salary in 2006 made up only 68.1% of the men’s average salary, as against 72.6% in 2005 and 71.3% in 2004. “The women earn less than the men, can easier lose the job and encounter difficulties in being reemployed,” says the study “Gender-Related Problems in the Context of the Millennium Development Goals in Moldova” carried out by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and UNDP in Moldova. Mihaela Darii, UNIFEM Gender Statistics coordinator, explained the widening discrepancy by the fact that the women work in the service sector (74-80% of the employees), in such areas as medical assistance, social assistance, education, hotels and restaurants, as well as in agriculture (43%). The salaries in both of the sectors are rather low. Though the women in education for instance constitute 73%, their average salary makes up only 75.5% of the men’s. In the fields of public health and social assistance, the women make up 80.5% of the employees, but they receive only 83.6% of the men’s average salary. Although the women represent the majority of the persons with higher education, only 5% of managers in the business sector are women, about 2% of the women managers head companies, corporations and financial groups, 10% head medium-sized companies and 40% small companies. Only one woman in ten that graduated from universities finds employment according to the specialty. Though the number of unemployed women is lower than of unemployed men, the fact that 416,000 of jobless persons aged over 15 are men and 672,000 are women arouses concern. Men make up 4,200 of the unemployed aged 25 – 34, while women – 8,100. Some 52% of the persons employed in the informal sector (34% of the employed) are women. The women have a workload of 70-80 hours a week. As a result, the women have much less free time – some 1.5 times less than the men. The field studies show that the housekeeping in developed countries takes 30 hours a week, while in such post-Soviet states as Moldova – 40 hours weekly.