War on gender gaps in wages- New research offers practical solutions to the problem

Background

Ghana’s march towards gender parity received a major boost when indefatigable first lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, of blessed memory, led a group of gender activists to participate in the Beijing Conference on Gender Equality in 1995.

Since that watershed moment, the country has made significant strides in achieving gender equality and equity in its socio-economic structure. Areas such as girl child education, which faced significant socio-cultural opposition, have seen tremendous improvement, with the nation now achieving gender parity in primary education enrollment.

According to the World Bank, as of 2020, there were slightly more girls than boys, with a ratio of 102:100, at the primary level of education.  Career opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), which were thought to be the preserve of men have also seen a slow but steady rise in professionals who are women.

That’s not all, various human rights violations that women and girls endured in the name of culture and tradition have seen a gradual disbandment. Rites that kept women in serfdom known as ‘trokosi,’ have been dismantled completely, while certain elements of widowhood rites like shaving of hair, sleeping by the body of the late husband, etc, no longer exist.

To sustain the progress made so far, Ghana recently launched the Affirmative Action (Gender Equity) Act, 2024 (Act 1121), which was passed in July 2024 and launched on July 31, 2025.

The policy is a key component of a broader strategy to mainstream gender equality into all national development processes, with specific goals, including achieving at least 30% female representation in decision-making roles by 2026 and achieving full gender parity by 2034.

Generally speaking, these gains are commendable; however, one critical area that is still facing a monumental challenge is the wide gulf in wages earned between males and females.

Even though the conversations around the yawning wage gap have enjoyed front-burner discussions, there seems to be a lack of strong commensurate action to address the matter.

Various research done over the years has also not greatly helped the cause, as they appear to scratch the surface of the issue without fully diagnosing the root cause of the problem for effective remedies to be provided.

It begs the question then, whether the apparent inertia on the part of policy makers to act is a deliberate attempt to stifle the economic empowerment of women or it’s an inadvertent oversight?

A recently published research paper, sighted by Yours Very Truly, however, dives deeper into the issues and gives a glimmer of hope that the fight for equal pay for men and women in Ghana will be won soon.

Purpose of Research

Published by Francis Tsiboe and Festus Attah (2025), the research titled “Gender Gaps in Wages and Fringe Benefits: Insights From a Ghanaian Perspective,” explores all the factors contributing to this particular problem and provides empirical solutions to address it.

The study aimed to offer a more detailed and unbiased introspection of the causes of the gender gaps in wages and the economic implications of these disproportionate systems vis-à-vis the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5.

Accepted in the Journal of International Development(https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.70024), on July 15, 2025, the research focused on three key areas; (1) analysing the extent of compensation disparities across 11 occupation types classified under the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO); (2) examining the temporal changes in gender compensation patterns and (3) investigating the associations between the gender compensation gap and various socioeconomic factors.

Analysis of Research Methodology

To find veritable answers to these questions as contained in the three areas of focus, the researchers employed a two-step research design. The two-step research design is a highly nuanced approach where the individual-level female/male gaps (hereafter ‘gender gaps’) in wages and fringe benefits are first estimated and then regressed on socioeconomic factors and occupational groupings to establish potential associations.

According to the researchers, this metric was adopted to disentangle the effects of the pay attracted by females and males which is tangled with factors such as marital status, age, educational attainment, religion, occupational heterogeneity and ethnicity.

The researchers also used matching estimators to compensate for the extent to which selection bias affects estimates of the gender pay gap, which is not clearly established in the literature.

With respect to the source of data for the research, the researchers utilised a dataset harmonised across 10 population-based surveys fielded in Ghana at various times from 1991 to 2022, which are all publicly available at the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the National Data Archive (NADA).

The highly advanced methodology relied upon by the researchers and the inerrant nature of the data sourced make this research an exceptional piece of academic exercise.

Summary of Key Findings

The findings from this research should be a handbook for policymakers as it exposes the major handicaps with solutions that have so far been proposed to solve this problem.

Three (Tables 1-3) out of the five Tables presented by the researchers capture all the relevant variables like the individual and household characteristics of the labour force, occupational characteristics, and fringe benefits characteristics.

All these are critical elements that interplay to determine how much wages and compensation men and women earn.

Tables 4 and 5 present the Conditional heterogeneities in Ghana’s gender–wage gap with variables such as household size, age group, educational level, marital status, ethnicity, sector, among others.

The easily identifiable manner in which these variables are presented allows policymakers to directly tackle issues on a case-by-case basis. Tailoring such policy intervention is crucial because despite the overall gender wage disparity, the research observes the “documented reductions in gender gaps in specific areas within Ghana, such as agricultural production” (Adaku et al. 2023).

Discussing Research Recommendations

The Recommendations from the research strongly suggest that Ghana has been paying lip service to the issue of equal compensation for men and women. It is palpably evident that the two parties that have ruled Ghana since the dawn of the 4th Republic have not exhibited the willpower to economically elevate women to the status they deserve.

Concluding Remarks

The research, painstakingly and meticulously done over 33 years ( 1991-2024), leaves keen observers like me with a deep sense of foreboding. The question that plagues one’s mind, reading the research, is how much will equal pay for men and women affect the national budget, for which reasons exertions in that direction have been sub-par?

The irony of this confusion is that Ghana is economically buoyant enough to absorb any surge in wage bill owing to gender parity in wages and fringe benefits. This fact is succinctly captured by the researchers thus,” Ghana, a middle-income country with significant GDP growth, faces a gender–wage gap estimated between 27% and 33%, highlighting a need for deeper analysis into the long-term trends of this gap, especially given the dynamic adjustments of gender roles to economic changes and the potential for perpetuating ‘gender myths’ through static analyses”.

The Western countries have led the way, and Ghana can follow and become one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve gender parity in wages and fringe benefits. Also, there is a need for gender activists and women politicians, female celebrities, etc, to up the game when it comes to advocacy regarding wages and fringe benefits for women.

For example, in the United States, some strong advocates have led the fight for equal remuneration for women.
Megan Rapinoe, former captain of the US women’s soccer team and Naomi Osaka, a grand slam tennis player, have been vocal in this regard and have achieved great results for women in sports, especially.

In summary, I agree with the researchers that more such comprehensive research ought to be done periodically to measure the rate at which we are progressing or regressing with gender wage gaps and fringe benefits.

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