Decades of equal pay legislation and a steady rise in the number of women joining the workforce have not closed the earnings gap between men and women. A recent report by Julius Ongwae for People’s Daily lays out fresh research showing just how stubborn this gap remains, and why the usual explanations, fewer hours, different career choices, don’t tell the full story.
It’s Not About Skills or Hours Worked
A 2025 study published in the Journal of Development Economics found that women across Africa’s formal labour market continue to earn significantly less than men, and the gap isn’t mainly driven by fewer working hours or a preference for lower-paying professions. Using tax records and matched employer-employee data from South Africa, researchers traced nearly half of the gender pay gap to something more structural: women are simply more concentrated in firms that pay everyone, regardless of gender, less.
That distinction matters. It shifts the conversation away from individual choices and onto the design of labour markets themselves and onto which companies women can realistically access in the first place.
The Motherhood Years Widen the Gap
One of the more telling findings is the timing. The pay disparity widens sharply between ages 25 and 45, precisely the years when many women are carrying the heaviest load of childcare and family responsibility. This is where the research pushes back against a comforting assumption many of us hold: that education alone can close the income gap. It can’t, on its own, when the structural barriers sit elsewhere, in how careers progress, in who gets access to better-paying firms, and in how caregiving years intersect with promotion cycles.
Interestingly, the study also found that women switch employers almost as often as men do. The difference is what happens next: men are more likely to move into higher-paying companies when they switch, while women tend to remain within lower-paying tiers of the job market throughout their careers. Mobility exists, but it doesn’t translate into the same financial upside.
A Global Pattern, Not Just a Local One
Kenya’s experience mirrors a wider global picture. The 2025 World Economic Forum gender pay gap report puts the worldwide gap at roughly 20 per cent, driven largely by how few women occupy leadership roles and high-paying academic fields. Dr Emily Bosire, a senior lecturer at Moi University’s School of Information Sciences, frames it plainly: women remain underrepresented in leadership and in the high-paying academic disciplines that widen the overall earnings gap.
Dr Bosire points to vertical segregation as a persistent obstacle: relatively few women hold positions such as vice chancellor, deputy vice chancellor, dean, or director, roles that come with higher pay and stronger benefits. She also highlights how the unequal burden of unpaid care work forces many women to delay promotions, scale back research output, or skip career-advancing opportunities like academic conferences and international collaborations. Her recommendations are practical: regular pay audits, transparent promotion processes, stronger mentorship programmes, and deliberate efforts to grow women’s participation in STEM fields.
The Weight of Juggling Multiple Roles
Edinah Kangwana, a transformational leader and CEO of Arise Circle KE, brings a personal lens to the numbers. Reflecting on her banking career, she says balancing the roles of mother, wife, daughter, community leader, and professional made it harder to compete on equal footing with colleagues. Maternity leave, childcare, and family obligations meant missing the networking events, professional training, and travel opportunities that often shape performance reviews and promotion decisions.
Her call to action is direct: women need to believe in their own capabilities and step forward for leadership opportunities, even when the environment around them isn’t fully levelled yet.
