Indian IT Industry Faces Gender Pay Gap of 29 Percent: Monster.com

The IT industry in India faces a severe gender gap not only in terms of number of women in the payroll but also in terms of remuneration as women employees are getting far less pay than their male counterparts, says a Monster.com report.

According to the Monster Salary Index India IT Sector Report 2014, only 30 percent of the total IT sector workforce in India are women and the fairer sex also faces a huge gender pay gap of 29 percent.

The gross salary of a male IT worker is Rs. 359.25 per hour while a female receives Rs. 254.04 per hour and this disparity possibly emerges from the fact that men get promoted to supervisory positions more often than women.

Only 36 percent of female employees are promoted to a supervisory position, while 52 percent of male staff get promoted to a supervisory rank, the report said.

"Amongst many other aspects that the report highlighted - the revelation is the enormous gender gap which employs only 30 percent women," Monster.com MD (India/Middle East/Southeast Asia/Hong Kong) Sanjay Modi said.

Modi added: "It is surprising to see that the most modern sector of India is not only predisposed to a certain gender but is also paying lesser to women employees than their male counterparts with a grave pay gap of 29 percent".

India has a typical socio-cultural mindset, wherein women often prefer or are compelled to take up part-time jobs as it is expected that they fulfil primary responsibility of taking care of household activities and children.

The report further said that more experienced workers are paid better than less experienced ones. While on an average an employee with less than 3 years of experience gets Rs. 142.97 per hour and an employee with more than 10 years of experience gets Rs. 625.55 per hour.

In terms of job tenure, women are at a secondary position as they find it hard to accumulate years in office due to family obligations.

"With more number of career breaks in their job history, the negotiating capacity of women in the labour market declines. Hence, men with similar experience earn higher salary as compared to women," the report said.

The other factors that influence the salary are company size and ownership. It is observed that wholly-owned foreign companies pay higher salaries. In India, about 65 percent of workforce in IT sector works in large to mid-sized companies with more than 5,000 employees, the report added.