third trends in gender gaps in hourly pay may capture direct pay discrimination but if women work parttime or have long periods out of employment gender lifetime income gaps will be even greater however over recent decades women have increased their education sometimes overtaking that of men extended theirtenure in employment and also entered new occupations such as medicine and law all this suggests that action by women themselves is not sufficient to bring about equality and it is the institutional context in which women are pursuing their careers that needs to change there needs to be a greater focus on changing employment institutions including reforming practices of wage setting recruitment and promotion which is the focus of this brief these changes need to go handinhand with policies to recognize the value of womens unpaid care work in the household and extend social support for care work issues that are addressed in policy brief no both types of reforms are essential to reduce both the gender pay gap and the gap in women s lifetime income international definitions consider low pay to be below to per cent of median pay but minimum wage levels are usually below these ratios