Employers tend to provide workers control over their work when they trust and believe that will contribute back to the company rather than to skive off work. As a result, this control is rewarded only to high-skill workers in top occupations. Since society still holds rather gendered views of men and women—believing that men’s priorities lies in breadwinning while women will prioritize their family life, employers are more reluctant to provide control over work time to women, believing they will use it to care for their families rather than use it to improve their work performance.

In stark contrast to Qantas boss Alan Joyce, whose pay packet nearly doubled to A$25 million ($27.5m) last year, Lundgren requested a pay cut when taking the reigns at British airline EasyJet. So why would a high-flying executive make such a strange request? He wants to fight the gender pay gap, and to prove he's a man of his word he's reducing his salary from £740,000 ($1.4m) to match that of his predecessor Carolyn McCall.

The explanation owes much to simple economics, and may be a sign that worker pay will finally pick up more broadly amid the lowest unemployment rate since 2000. Sales of men’s clothes are surging as the industry shifts toward high-end boutiques with personalized service, and it’s boosting pay to attract skilled workers from the smaller pool of men who work in apparel retail. Compare that with women’s-specific clothiers, which bring in far more sales overall but are slumping and shutting locations across the country.

At a time when there is an acute shortage of welders and other tradespeople, hardly any women are being trained for these and other well-paying jobs. This more than 40 years after Congress banned sex discrimination in American education. Experts offer several reasons for this split, including gender stereotypes and the threat of workplace harassment in male-dominated jobs. But employers and advocates agree it’s hurting both women and the economy, leaving families stuck in poverty and businesses scrambling for workers in fields, such as IT and advanced manufacturing, where they’re growing troublingly scarce.

You've heard of the gender wage gap: the well-documented fact that women, on average, earn around 80 cents for every dollar a man makes (the gap is even bigger for women of color). But in reading up on the pay gap, you've likely across other terms like "pay secrecy," "pay disparity" or "pay equity." So what does all this ancillary vocabulary mean when we talk about women in the workplace?

The report estimates that 57% of the jobs set to be displaced by technology between now and 2026 belong to women. According to Saadia Zahidi, the WEF’s head of education, gender and work, this underlines that global efforts to reduce gender inequality in business are stalling. “We’re really looking at a worsening of inequality, particularly in IT but across all sectors,” Zahidi said. “We are losing valuable opportunity to reduce gender inequality.”

Amazon’s decision follows the passage of several state and local laws banning employers from asking interviewees how much they’re compensated. California, where many of Amazon’s big tech competitors have their headquarters, passed a salary history law in October that went into effect at the beginning of this year.

"There was a time when the women's game was a lot more interesting than the guys', and we never asked for more," she continued. "I don't think Novak is seeing the big picture here. You need to send that signal to the world that women and men are equal and you have to back it up with the prize money. It's not about quantity, quality - it's about the drama and that we're all in this together, and the guys just need to get over it."

"When we modelled the factors that influence pay, the results showed that both men's and women's pay grow for most of their lives. "Overall, women's pay grows less than men's and also stops growing earlier than men's pay. This applies to both the private and public sectors."

For full-time employees, men were paid more than women across the board last year, the Office for National Statistics said in a report published Wednesday. At almost 25 percent, the gap is largest in skilled trades -- the most male-dominated of all the occupations. The smallest difference is in sales and customer service, where the workforce is almost evenly split between the genders.

The New York-based financial company announced the effort Monday, saying it came after a Citigroup compensation assessment in the three countries found that women on average were paid 99% of what men got and minorities on average received 99% of what non-minorities were paid. "As part of this year's compensation cycle, we are making appropriate increases to help close the gaps for women and U.S. minorities," Michael Murray, Citigroup's head of human resources, said in a Monday blog post. "We will also adjust compensation for other individuals where the analysis determined increases were warranted."