The IT industry in India faces a severe gender gap not only in terms of the 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 per cent of the total IT sector workforce in India is comprised of women and the fairer sex also faces a huge gender pay gap of 29 per cent.

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 per cent of female employees are promoted to a supervisory position, while 52 per cent 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 per cent 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 per cent.”

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 the primary responsibility of taking care of household activities and children.

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

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

“With more 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 per cent of the workforce in IT sector works in large to mid-sized companies with more than 5,000 employees, the report added.

Published on July 23, 2014