Gender, Employment and Wage Disparities in Lao PDR

In order to provide substantive evidence of the gender wage gap in the private sector, SODA in collaboration with the CDRI and IDRC commissioned a survey which examined the causes of the gender pay gap and provided data for policy recommendations. This study comprises both a desk review and fieldwork. The desk review analyzed reports and statistics from official sources. The fieldwork consisted of individual interviews with employees and employers in the micro, small, medium, and macro- enterprises. Women in Lao PDR are major contributors to the economy, but even until today, their contributions remains invisible and therefore greatly undervalued due to the lack of sex-disaggregated data across all economic sectors. In the agricultural sector, women's contributions to agricultural production, often unpaid, are crucial to household food security and the rural economy. Yet their activities are often excluded from economic accounts.