Switzerland’s women hit by gender pay gap

The report says that men’s average pay is 18.5 percent higher than women’s in the Swiss workplace.

Only Germany (20.8 percent), Austria (19.2 percent) and Finland (18.9 percent) have a bigger percentage pay gap in Western Europe.

Movehub says there is not a single country in the world where women earn, on average, more than their male counterparts.

The Swiss rate 12th worst in the world, according to the website’s research, which ranks South Korea as the most significant offender with a 37.5 percent gender pay difference, followed by the Russian Federation (32.1 percent), Estonia (30 percent), Japan (27.4 percent) and India (24.8 percent).

Movehub published a graph on its website showing the average pay gap began to drop in the EU from 17.5 percent in 2008 to around 16 percent in 2010 before rising again in 2011 and 2012.

The website’s findings about Switzerland mirror those of The Economist, which on Saturday published a “glass-ceiling index” to coincide with International Women’s Day.

The Swiss rank third from the bottom in the index which surveys 27 OECD countries on nine indicators to show where women have the best chances of equal treatement at work.

The index is topped by Norway, followed by Sweden, Finland and Poland.

Only Japan and South Korea have poorer results than the Swiss in the index, which measures such things as the higher education gap, labour-force participation, wage gap. women on company boards, child-care costs and number of women in parliament.