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Data

Share of women among low pay earners

ILO

What you should know about this indicator

Workers are considered low pay if their hourly earnings at all jobs are less than two-thirds of median hourly earnings.

How is this data described by its producer - ILO?

With the aim of promoting international comparability, statistics presented on ILOSTAT are based on standard international definitions wherever feasible and may differ from official national figures. This measure of earnings dispersion refers to the percentage of low pay workers, among all low pay workers, who are female. For more information, refer to the Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination Indicators (GEND) database description.

Share of women among low pay earners
ILO
Percentage of low pay workers, among all low pay workers, who are female.
Source
International Labour Organization (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
August 12, 2025
Next expected update
August 2026
Date range
1995–2022
Unit
%

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Economic Inequality by Gender by Our World in Data

Economic Inequality by Gender

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell, and Max Roser

Explore charts that include this data

What you should know about this indicator

Workers are considered low pay if their hourly earnings at all jobs are less than two-thirds of median hourly earnings.

How is this data described by its producer - ILO?

With the aim of promoting international comparability, statistics presented on ILOSTAT are based on standard international definitions wherever feasible and may differ from official national figures. This measure of earnings dispersion refers to the percentage of low pay workers, among all low pay workers, who are female. For more information, refer to the Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination Indicators (GEND) database description.

Share of women among low pay earners
ILO
Percentage of low pay workers, among all low pay workers, who are female.
Source
International Labour Organization (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
August 12, 2025
Next expected update
August 2026
Date range
1995–2022
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

International Labour Organization – ILOSTAT

The ILO’s main online database, ILOSTAT, maintained by the Department of Statistics, is the world’s largest repository of labour market statistics. It covers all countries and regions and a wide range of labour-related topics, including employment, unemployment, wages, working time and labour productivity, to name a few. It includes time series going back as far as 1938; annual, quarterly and monthly labour statistics; country-level, regional and global estimates; and even projections of the main labour market indicators.

Retrieved on
September 17, 2025
Retrieved from
https://ilostat.ilo.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Labour Organization. (2025). ILO modelled estimates database, ILOSTAT [database]. Available from https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/.

The ILO’s main online database, ILOSTAT, maintained by the Department of Statistics, is the world’s largest repository of labour market statistics. It covers all countries and regions and a wide range of labour-related topics, including employment, unemployment, wages, working time and labour productivity, to name a few. It includes time series going back as far as 1938; annual, quarterly and monthly labour statistics; country-level, regional and global estimates; and even projections of the main labour market indicators.

Retrieved on
September 17, 2025
Retrieved from
https://ilostat.ilo.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Labour Organization. (2025). ILO modelled estimates database, ILOSTAT [database]. Available from https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/.

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All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of women among low pay earners”. Our World in Data (2025). Data adapted from International Labour Organization. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250917-145504/grapher/female-share-of-low-pay-earners.html [online resource] (archived on September 17, 2025).
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

International Labour Organization (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

International Labour Organization (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of women among low pay earners – ILO” [dataset]. International Labour Organization, “ILOSTAT” [original data]. Retrieved September 18, 2025 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250917-145504/grapher/female-share-of-low-pay-earners.html (archived on September 17, 2025).