Korn Ferry Global Gender Pay Index

The gender pay gap is often presented as evidence that women are routinely paid significantly less than men for doing the same work. However, one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses ever conducted suggests that this interpretation is misleading. The Korn Ferry Global Gender Pay Index found that while average earnings differ substantially between men and women overall, the difference almost disappears when employees are compared on a true like-for-like basis.

Korn Ferry, a global organisational consulting firm, analysed compensation data from more than 12.3 million employees working at 14,284 companies across 53 countries. The study drew on one of the world's largest salary databases, allowing researchers to compare employees while controlling for factors that have a major influence on pay, including job level, employer and job function.

At first glance, the findings appear to support the conventional narrative. Across the global workforce, women earned an average of 16.1 percent less than men. However, this figure compares the earnings of all employed men with all employed women, regardless of occupation, seniority, employer or role. It is therefore a measure of average earnings, not equal pay for equal work.

Once Korn Ferry compared employees performing work at the same organisational level, the gap fell sharply from 16.1 percent to 5.3 percent. Restricting the comparison further to men and women working at the same level within the same company reduced the difference to just 1.5 percent.

Finally, when the analysis compared employees who worked at the same level, in the same company and in the same function, the remaining gap was only 0.5 percent. In practical terms, the researchers concluded that men and women performing equivalent work in equivalent circumstances were paid almost exactly the same.

The study argues that the much larger overall earnings gap is driven primarily by workforce composition rather than unequal pay rates. Men remain disproportionately represented in higher-paying industries, technical specialisations and senior leadership positions, while women are more heavily represented in occupations and sectors that typically pay less. These differences in occupational distribution have a much greater impact on average earnings than differences in pay within comparable jobs.

Importantly, Korn Ferry did not conclude that gender inequality has been solved. Instead, the report argued that organisations seeking to reduce overall earnings differences should focus on improving women's representation in higher-paying functions, industries and executive roles rather than assuming widespread unequal pay for identical work. According to the researchers, increasing opportunities for women to enter engineering, finance, technology and senior management would have a greater effect on closing the overall earnings gap than policies aimed solely at equal-pay compliance, where relatively little disparity was found.

The findings also highlight the distinction between two concepts that are frequently conflated in public debate. "Equal pay" refers to men and women receiving the same remuneration for equivalent work. The "gender pay gap" usually measures the difference between the average earnings of all men and all women, regardless of what jobs they perform. Korn Ferry's analysis suggests that while the latter remains significant, the former is close to parity in many workplaces once meaningful like-for-like comparisons are made.

As debates over pay equity continue around the world, the Korn Ferry Global Gender Pay Index remains one of the clearest demonstrations that the headline gender pay gap largely reflects differences in occupational and organisational representation rather than systematic differences in pay for employees performing the same work under the same conditions.

External Links

• Press release by Korn Ferry

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