Women in the Pacific

Women are consistently less employed

The number of employed women is consistently lower than that of men across all geographic zones and recorded years in our dataset.

This disparity is significant, with most zones — except Vanuatu and Tonga — showing over 50% more employed men than women.

In the Marshall Islands , the gap is even more pronounced, with twice as many men employed compared to women.

Fig 1: Number of employed men and women in Kiribati. Data: Employed population by economic sector (link)

Having established that women are generally less likely to be employed, let's now examine if there are wage disparities compared to men.

Women earn less on average

Wage differences between men and women are a notorious indicator of gender inequality.

Our study provides access to the gross earnings ratio between women and men for six of the seven islands (data for Nauru is missing). This ratio indicates how much women earn compared to men: a value above 1 means women earn more, while a value below 1 means they earn less.

The data is categorized by occupation type. In the graph below, each circle represents an occupation type, and the bar represents the overall data for all occupations combined.

In the majority of the geographic zones (4 out of 6), the ratio is below 1, indicating that women earn less than men.

Fig 2: Gross earning ratio between women and men. Represented for all occupations (bars) and split by occupations (circles). Data: Gender pay gap in wages (link)

However, in Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, the ratio is above 1, suggesting that women earn more than men in these areas. This surprising result conflicts with some other studies on the topic, indicating a need for further exploration of the data.

It's worth noting that certain work categories deviate from this pattern: in elementary occupations and craft and related trades, women consistently earn less than men.

Education: The Root Cause?

A potential explanation for gender inequality could be educational attainment. However, the data does not support this theory.

Educational attainment varies across the islands. For example, in Vanuatu, most people complete primary school, whereas in Nauru, the majority reach upper secondary school.

Overall, educational attainment remains consistent across different age groups, with some notable exceptions. In Kiribati, for instance, most people aged 55-64 (right graph) only completed lower secondary school, while younger individuals (aged 25-54, left graph) reached upper secondary school.

Fig 3.1 and 3.2: highest level of education completed by individuals in Kiribati. The chart on the left represents younger individuals, while the chart on the right represents older individuals. Data: Education Attainment by country (link)

More importantly, there is no significant difference between males and females in terms of educational attainment.

For example, in the 25-54 age group, women consistently graduate at the tertiary level more frequently than men, except in Vanuatu. Similarly, for upper secondary education, women outnumber men except in Palau.

Conclusion

Despite advances in education, gender inequality remains pronounced in the Pacific Islands, with women earning less and holding fewer managerial positions than men.

The wage gap persists across various occupations, and educational attainment alone does not account for these disparities.

Addressing this issue requires a deeper examination of structural and cultural factors beyond education.

Material and Method

This project is built with React and D3.js, with graphs inspired by the React Graph Gallery. Styling is handled using Tailwind CSS and ShadcnUI components. The source code is available on GitHub.

The data is sourced from the Pacific Data Hub, and the exact datasets are linked in the captions of each chart.

This is a project made by Yan Holtz for the Pacific Data Challenge.