Gender inequality: Women entering jobs today will work 4 years more than males over a lifetime.

A young woman entering the job market today can expect to work for the equivalent of an average of four years more than her male peers over her lifetime, says international anti-poverty organisation ActionAid.

The extra four years accounts for women balancing both paid and unpaid care work, and amounts to the equivalent of an extra month’s work for every woman, every year of her life.

ActionAid’s report, titled Not Ready, Still Waiting, found there is a need for major changes in developing nations and richer countries as well as in global institutions.

The report has been released one year after world leaders pledged to tackle inequality in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

“Countries aren’t prepared. They don’t have the adequate policies in place to ensure that they will meet the goals, particularly around gender equality,” Holly Miller, a spokeswoman for ActionAid Australia, told The World Today.

The report looked at 10 developing countries and found they did not have the policies in place to help reduce inequality.

It also found that developed countries were not doing enough to support these nations to reach the goals.

“Three of ten developing countries we looked at are making satisfactory progress on less than half of the policy indicators,” ActionAid International’s chief executive Adriano Campolina said in a statement.

Only Brazil, South Africa and Ghana had more than 65 per cent of key inequality-reducing policies in place.

The report said gender inequality in work cost women in poor countries $US9 trillion each year.

Australian women not paid for work

The report also points out that even in a developed nation like Australia, inequalities such as the gender pay gap persist.

It said the gender pay gap in Australia had increased since 2004, with women being paid 17.3 per cent less than men.

“This pay disparity, coupled with the unpaid care work that women manage, leads to women having less than half the retirement income of men, whilst living longer,” the report said.

Marian Baird, a professor of gender and employment relations at the University of Sydney’s Business School, said many Australian women were also doing unpaid hours of domestic and caring work.

“Women do more of the unpaid work, both in the home and the community, but less of the paid work. They also receive less money in their paid work. So over their life course they are actually putting in more hours in total but ending up with a lower income,” she told The World Today.

She said there are many policies in Australia that could be improved.

“Do we set up a tax system that doesn’t penalise women who are working part-time, which is a way that women combine their work and care responsibilities in Australia? We need a tax system that doesn’t penalise them for that. We need to provide probably some return to work bonuses or superannuation contributions that will build up their superannuation over the long term.”

Professor Baird said the minimum wage was a policy that was often overlooked, but essential in promoting gender equality.

“The minimum wage is very important, because lots of women’s incomes are based on the minimum wage and so are some of their benefits.

“So for example, parental leave pay is at the rate of the minimum wage. So if we lower the minimum wage we quickly lower women’s income-earning abilities and therefore equity. Studies overseas have shown that maintaining the minimum age or increasing the minimum wage is a very quick way of closing the gender pay gap. So minimum wages are essential.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.