On International Equal Pay Day, observed on September 18, the focus is often on what women earn compared with men. But for many women, the gap begins long before the payslip, with unequal access to jobs, opportunities and career progression…
A woman can have the same degree as a man, enter the same profession and even begin on the same salary. Yet a decade later, their earnings can look very different. Somewhere between that first job and the payslip, their careers may have taken very different paths.
For women, those paths are often shaped by decisions that have little to do with ability or ambition. Can she accept a job that requires a long commute? Can she work late when needed? Is it safe for her to travel home after dark? Can she relocate for a better opportunity? What happens to her career when she has a child? Can she afford childcare and can she return to the same professional track after taking time away?
That is why International Equal Pay Day, observed on September 18, is about more than equal pay for equal work. It is also about whether women have the same opportunities to enter, remain in and progress through the labour market.
Pakistan’s numbers show how early the inequality begins. The World Bank puts female labour force participation at just 24 per cent in 2025, compared with 80.1 per cent for men. Among women who do enter paid employment, the gap continues: an ILO analysis published in 2025 found that women in wage employment earn around 25 to 30 per cent less than men, depending on the measure used. In the informal economy, the gap widens to around 40 per cent. The ILO identifies occupational segregation, informal employment and discriminatory practices among the factors behind the difference, while much of the gap remains unexplained by observable factors such as education, skills or occupation.
When flexibility costs
more than time
Flexibility is often presented as the solution to women’s employment problems but flexibility without equal pay or progression can create another form of inequality.
A professional who cannot stay late because she is responsible for children or elderly relatives may choose a lower-paid job closer to home. Another woman may reject a promotion because it involves frequent travel. A third may work from home because it is the only arrangement her family will accept.
These choices can look voluntary from the outside but the circumstances behind them matter. Time spent cooking, cleaning, caring for children and looking after elderly relatives is time that cannot simultaneously be spent earning, networking, training or pursuing promotion.
Pakistan’s unpaid care burden makes this particularly significant. It is estimated that 117.4 million people in the country engage in unpaid care and domestic work, including 66.7 million women. Women are heavily represented in tasks ranging from cooking and cleaning to childcare and livestock care.
Research on working women in urban Pakistan captures the pressure behind those figures. *Ayesha, who works a full time job, describes her experience simply, “Sometimes I think I am working more than my husband. It is a dual job.” Her experience highlights how unpaid responsibilities do more than reduce women’s free time; they can shape which paid jobs they can accept and how far they can progress.
When motherhood changes
the trajectory
For software professional *Sara, the difference became clear after she had her first child. She had spent years building her career, taking on demanding projects and moving into better-paid roles. Then she took a year away from work after becoming a mother.
“When I came back, I realised I was not really coming back to the same career,” Sara says. The roles she had previously considered required longer hours and greater availability, while some of the opportunities she had been working towards had moved on in her absence. She eventually found herself considering positions that offered more flexibility but fewer opportunities for advancement.
Her experience reflects a wider problem. A career break can mean lost experience, slower progression and weaker bargaining power, while returning mothers may find themselves on a different professional track from the one they left. The financial consequences can extend beyond salary to savings and retirement income.
The ILO notes that the global pay gap is wider for women with children, highlighting how motherhood can become an economic penalty rather than simply a temporary interruption to employment. Globally, women in wage employment still earn about 20 per cent less than men.
The jobs women can
realistically take
Even before motherhood enters the picture, women do not always have the same labour market available to them. Safety concerns, transport, family expectations and restrictions on mobility can influence whether a woman accepts a job, where she works and how far she can travel. A well-paid position in another part of the city may be inaccessible if commuting alone is considered unsafe. A job requiring relocation may be ruled out entirely. Evening shifts may not be an option. That means inequality can enter the process before salary negotiations even begin. Two graduates may have the same qualifications but if only one can freely choose where, when and how to work, their opportunities are not genuinely equal.
What closing the gap
actually requires
Closing the gap therefore requires changing the conditions around women’s work, not just the figure attached to it. The ILO’s recommendations include more transparent wage-setting, stronger labour protections, formalising informal employment and creating clearer routes for women to progress into better-paid work. Its global guidance also points to affordable care systems, social protection and measures that make pay differences easier to identify.
But one of the most overlooked parts of that equation is unpaid care. If women continue to carry most of the responsibility for children, elderly relatives and household work, they will continue to have less time and flexibility to build careers on equal terms.
That is why equal pay is ultimately about more than what an employer puts on a payslip. It is about who gets to work, which jobs they can realistically accept, how long they can remain in them and whether life outside work is structured in a way that allows them to progress.
And, perhaps most fundamentally, unpaid domestic and care work must stop being treated as though it costs nothing. Because it does. Women pay for it with their time. And time, in the labour market, is money.
*Names have been changed to retain privacy.
The writer is a subeditor at You! magazine. She can be reached at [email protected]
