Singapore's Gender Pay Gap Monitoring — MOM's Adjusted-Gap Decomposition Instead of Mandatory Pay Transparency

Singapore does not mandate employer-level pay transparency. Instead, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) publishes a national gender pay gap and decomposes it statistically into an unadjusted gap and an adjusted gap that controls for observable job characteristics.
MOM reported an unadjusted gap of 16.3% (2018), which narrowed to 14.3% in 2023. The adjusted gap, comparing similarly situated workers, was 6.0% in January 2020 (down from 8.8% in 2002); the 2024 parliamentary reply also cites 6% for 2023. MOM attributes the raw gap mainly to occupational differences (fewer women in higher-paying science, technology and engineering roles), parenthood and caregiving, and discrimination; the residual is linked to differences in work experience and career continuity.
In April 2024 the Manpower Minister explicitly declined to issue pay transparency guidelines, arguing they may be ineffective without tackling root causes and could be counterproductive if they affect how firms hire. The government instead points to the SG Women in Tech movement, the Alliance for Action on Work-Life Harmony (2021), Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests, paternity leave raised from two to four weeks, and forthcoming Workplace Fairness legislation.
Evidence caveat: the decomposition is a monitoring tool, not an evaluation. The sources do not show that these measures caused the gap to narrow, and no employer-level disclosure exists to test the minister's concern about hiring effects.

Read the full analysis: https://www.mom.gov.sg/newsroom/press-releases/2020/0109-singapores-adjusted-gender-pay-gap-narrows-to-6-percent