Insee Focus · February 2026 · n° 377

Gender pay gap in 2024 The reduction in wage disparities continued at a pace close to its long‑term trend

In 2024, women’s average wage income was 21.8% lower than men’s in the private sector. This pay gap reflected in part the lower women’s annual volume of work, as women were less often employed during the year and worked part-time more often. However, even for the annual volume of work, women's average salary was 14.0% lower than men's. Since 1995, wage income inequalities had fallen by a third. Reduction in the gap in the volume of work on the one hand and in full‑time equivalent (FTE) salary on the other hand contributed to this decline. In 2024, the wage income gap narrowed by 0.4 points, more moderately than between 2019 and 2023 (-0.9 per year on average), but at the same pace as the average for the last three decades.

The pay gap could also be explained by the gender distribution of occupations: women did not occupy the same types of jobs and did not work in the same sectors as men, and had less access to the highest paying positions. In 2024, women accounted for 42% salaried positions in the private sector in FTE, but only 24% of the top 1% of the highest‑paying positions. For the same job in the same establishment, the net salary gap in FTE was reduced to 3.6%.