Wage differences persist between Norwegians males, females: report

OSLO, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Norwegian female workers earned not more than 86 percent of total monthly wage of male workers last year, newspaper Aftenposten reported Wednesday.

"We can generally explain the wages gap by the fact that many women choose jobs in low paid professions, while men prefer professions with a higher salary level," Statistics Norway (SSB) wrote in a recent article.

However, wage growth has been slightly higher for women than for men throughout the 2000s.

According to SSB, the largest differences were noticed among full-time employees and those with higher education.

Although there are now more women than men who complete higher education in Norway, the wage difference among workers with higher education has not significantly changed during the 2000s.

This is primarily due to inequality in the choice of education and later occupation, said SSB.

Six out of 10 leaders are men, while women clearly dominate in sales and service industries. Women that chose academic professions earn almost 20 percent less than men in this sector, mostly due to different jobs performed by men and women.

Wage differences are relatively small in the municipal sector and of similar height in the private sector. Enditem