Why do gender pay gaps and other disparities persist despite converging education levels and mounting evidence that the public opposes such forms of inequality? The problem lies less in outdated beliefs and biases than in entrenched structural constraints to women’s economic advancement.

Gender inequality in the labor market remains both pervasive and paradoxical. Despite widespread opposition to gender disparities, women’s labor-force participation rate (globally) is still around 24 percentage points below that of men, and the share of women living in economies that ensure near-full legal equality is smaller than 5 per cent. Though women do work more than in the past, they earn less than men and are also less likely to hold senior roles, sustaining a structural wage gap even as education levels have converged.

Gender gaps in earnings can be partly explained by differences in education, experience, occupation, and industry, with the “unexplained” part of the gap often being attributed to bias. Yet wage inequality is shaped not only by labor market outcomes, but also by social norms and perceptions of what constitutes fair pay for men and women. This disconnect between beliefs, norms, and earnings is one of the most misunderstood features of gender inequality in developing economies today.

New experimental evidence from South Africa suggests that individuals do not systematically assign a lower value to women’s work when evaluating identical tasks. When asked to determine what workers “should” be paid, respondents do not penalize women relative to men. Instead, they differentiate wages across occupations, and jobs traditionally performed by women are assigned lower pay regardless of the worker’s gender.

This distinction is critical. It suggests that inequality is driven not primarily by a belief that women deserve less pay for the same work, but rather by a more systematic undervaluation of work associated with women.

The broader literature on gender inequality aligns with this insight. The Nobel laureate economist Claudia Goldin’s work emphasises how occupational sorting and job structures, not just discrimination, drive gender-based wage inequality. Similarly, research on gender norms in developing countries shows that while explicit attitudes may evolve, implicit institutional constraints, other social norms, and labor-market segmentation continue to shape outcomes. Even in contexts where support for gender equality is widespread, structural barriers such as limited access to professional networks, promotion pathways, and high-return sectors remain.

This explains why fewer than one-third of senior managers are women, even though women are increasingly outpacing men in tertiary education globally. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 shows that while all high-income economies have closed at least 99 per cent of their education gender gap, none has closed its economic gender gap by more than 85 per cent. Evidently, the main barrier to women’s leadership is not a lack of skills or preparation, but the broader system’s failure to convert credentials into careers.

Firm-level evidence from South Africa reinforces this view. Women hold only 10 per cent of CEO positions in Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies, and when they do reach top positions, they often earn less than men. In the United States, Payscale finds that women executives earn just 69 cents per dollar earned by male executives, the widest gap of any group, reflecting the cumulative effects of slower career progression and caregiving penalties.

Notably, while the presence of women in the most senior roles is associated with greater female representation in leadership more broadly, representation in mid-level roles has little effect on advancement. This pattern reveals a critical bottleneck: increasing the number of women in the workforce or in mid-level roles does not automatically translate into equality at the top.

The problem here is that pipeline effects, where women’s presence at one level lifts representation at the next, are strongest at the lowest managerial levels, and weaker the higher one rises in the hierarchy. Research shows that senior leaders are inclined to promote people like themselves. Without women already embedded at the highest levels, organizations tend to reproduce the existing composition. Indeed, Glassdoor finds that women’s earnings stall in their mid-30s while men’s continue to rise, more than doubling the pay gap over a career.

The upshot is that even if societies do not endorse unequal pay, labor markets might continue to reproduce gender inequality. That is why gender gaps in employment, earnings, and leadership remain despite decades of progress in education and legal reforms. Even where laws to address the problem are in place, they do not always translate into gender equality, because other barriers limit progress for women.

For example, women in Sub-Saharan Africa are disproportionately concentrated in informal and low-productivity sectors, with unpaid care responsibilities that limit their access to better-paying opportunities. The result is a form of inequality that remains deeply embedded in the economy.

These less visible sources of inequality have important policy implications. The challenge is not simply to change beliefs, but to transform the structures that shape economic opportunities and perpetuate long-term inequality. As long as women remain in lower-paying sectors and hold vulnerable jobs, gender wage gaps will persist, even in the absence of explicit bias or with improved social norms.

Policymakers must also shift their attention to organizational dynamics and leadership pipelines. The strong link between top-level female leadership and broader inclusion suggests that representation at the top can have a multiplier effect. Interventions that support women’s progression from junior roles into senior management through mentorship, sponsorship, or transparent promotion systems can have far-reaching effects.

Finally, there needs to be stronger institutional accountability. Where voluntary progress is slow, disclosure requirements, targets, and even higher quotas can help accelerate change, particularly in sectors where gender imbalances are most entrenched.

Recent reversals underscore the urgency of this issue. In January 2025, the Trump administration rescinded Executive Order 11246, a 60-year-old requirement for federal contractors to take affirmative action on employment equality. If these kinds of accountability mechanisms can be dismantled overnight, we will need to find more durable, enforceable frameworks to preserve the gains that have been made.

Gender inequality is not simply a problem of outdated beliefs. It is structural. Until policies remove existing constraints, the gap between what societies consider fair and what they deliver will remain wide.

This commentary is published in collaboration with the International Economic Association’s Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative, which aims to enhance the role of women in economics through research, building partnerships, and amplifying voices.

Copyright Project Syndicate 2026

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.