How Much Do Women Earn Compared to Men in the Dominican Republic?

Women in the Dominican Republic earn less than men on average, although the size of the difference depends heavily on the type of employment, occupation, working hours and position within the labor market. The latest available official indicators show that the gender earnings gap is not explained by a single factor: it appears alongside differences in employment participation, informality, occupational segregation, unpaid care responsibilities and access to senior positions.

The Average Earnings Gap Between Women and Men

The most directly comparable national figure comes from the Dominican Republic’s gender-gap statistics presented by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). In 2023, average hourly labor income was RD$128.1 for women and RD$143.5 for men.

The difference was RD$15.4 per hour. Expressed relative to men’s earnings, women received approximately 89.3 pesos for every RD$100 earned by men, equivalent to an hourly earnings gap of about 10.7%.

This is an economy-wide comparison of average hourly earnings. It should not be interpreted as proof that every woman is paid 10.7% less than every man doing the same job. Average earnings also reflect differences in occupations, industries, seniority, working arrangements and hours.

The Informal Sector Has a Much Wider Gap

The difference becomes considerably larger in informal employment. Labor-market figures cited in recent Dominican reporting put average hourly earnings in the informal sector at RD$140.1 for men and RD$102.8 for women.

That is a difference of RD$37.3 per hour. Women therefore earned approximately 73.4 pesos for every RD$100 earned by men in the cited informal-sector comparison, corresponding to a gap of roughly 26.6% when measured against men’s hourly earnings.

The hourly difference is also important because monthly comparisons can be misleading when men and women work different numbers of hours. For illustration, multiplying the RD$37.3 hourly difference by eight hours and 22 working days gives approximately RD$6,565 per month. At 25 eight-hour working days, the difference would be about RD$7,460. The exact monthly gap therefore depends on the working schedule rather than representing a fixed monthly penalty.

The larger informal-sector gap is consistent with broader evidence that women face greater disadvantages in lower-quality and less-protected employment. The World Bank has previously found that the Dominican wage gap widens among workers at the bottom of the income distribution and that women are heavily represented in sectors such as domestic service and social and health services, while men dominate construction, agriculture and transportation.

Formal Employment Does Not Eliminate the Earnings Gap

Formal employment provides greater access to social protection and registered employment relationships, but moving into the formal sector does not automatically remove gender differences in earnings. The National Statistics Office (ONE), the Dominican Republic’s official statistical agency, publishes labor-market indicators covering earnings, hours, employment status and gender.

ONE’s labor statistics include separate series for average hourly income by sex, average monthly income, gender differences in labor income, working hours and the share of workers in informal employment. The latest series extend through 2024, allowing the gender earnings question to be examined alongside broader labor-market changes rather than relying on a single year’s estimate.

The distinction between average earnings and equal pay for comparable work is particularly important. An economy-wide wage gap can result partly from the concentration of men and women in different occupations and industries. A comparison of workers performing comparable jobs addresses a different question: whether women and men receive similar compensation when their roles and characteristics are more closely matched.

Evidence of a Gap Among Workers in the Same Position

In June 2025, the president of the National Commission for the Defense of Competition (Pro-Competencia), María Elena Vásquez Taveras, cited a figure of an 18% earnings difference between women and men performing the same work. The figure was reported in connection with a discussion of gender equality in the Dominican labor market.

This 18% figure should be distinguished from the national average hourly gap. The two measurements answer different questions and should not be combined mathematically. The national hourly figure compares average earnings across the labor market, while the 18% figure was presented as a comparison within the same work or position.

Research by the World Bank provides additional context. Its analysis of Dominican labor-market data found that women’s average hourly wages were about 15% lower than men’s between 2008 and 2016, even after matching women and men on observable characteristics such as age, education, place of residence, children in the household, industry, occupation and job tenure. The study also found that the difference was approximately twice as large for women in the bottom 40% of the income distribution.

Education Has Not Fully Closed the Earnings Difference

The Dominican labor market presents an important contrast between educational attainment and economic outcomes. Women have achieved substantial representation in higher education, but this has not translated automatically into equal earnings across the labor market.

The World Bank’s Dominican Republic Gender Scorecard for 2025 reports that women accounted for a much smaller share of tertiary graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics than men. According to the scorecard, 28% of male tertiary graduates were in STEM programs compared with 5% of female tertiary graduates.

This matters because educational attainment is only one component of earnings. The field of study can influence the occupations available to workers and the wages associated with those occupations. A high overall level of female education therefore does not necessarily produce equal average earnings if women and men remain concentrated in different fields and industries.

Women and Men Are Concentrated in Different Economic Activities

Occupational and sectoral segregation is one of the clearest structural features of the Dominican labor market. World Bank research identifies construction, agriculture and transportation as heavily male-dominated activities, while domestic service and social and health services have much higher concentrations of women.

These differences matter because average pay varies significantly between industries and occupations. If one group is more heavily represented in lower-paying activities, the resulting average earnings gap can persist even without comparing two workers who hold the same position.

This is why the gender pay gap should be examined through several measures at the same time: average hourly earnings, monthly income, occupational distribution, industry, employment status and comparable jobs. Looking at only one indicator can obscure the mechanisms behind the overall difference.

Hours Worked Also Affect the Income Difference

Hourly pay is only one part of the income equation. Total monthly earnings also depend on how many hours a person works and whether employment is continuous throughout the year.

ONE maintains a specific indicator for the gender gap in hours worked and separate statistics on average weekly hours in the main occupation. This distinction is important because a monthly earnings comparison can combine differences in hourly compensation with differences in working time.

The unequal distribution of unpaid domestic and care work is relevant here. ONE’s analysis of the ENHOGAR-2021 time-use module found that 44.8% of women aged 15 and older performed unpaid care work compared with 24.3% of men. Women spent an average of 16.4 hours per week on these activities, compared with 9.6 hours for men.

ECLAC and UN Women likewise reported that Dominican women spend more than twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic and care work. Among people aged 25 to 34, the burden represented 18.2% of daily time for women compared with 6.7% for men.

These figures do not by themselves establish how much of the wage gap is caused by unpaid care work. They do, however, document a substantial difference in the allocation of unpaid labor that can affect the amount and type of paid work available to women.

Women Also Face a Large Employment Participation Gap

The earnings gap exists alongside a broader difference in labor-market participation. According to the International Labour Organization, female labor-force participation in Latin America and the Caribbean was 52.1% in 2024, compared with 74.3% for men. The Dominican Republic is part of this regional labor-market context, although country-specific measures should be used when assessing the Dominican workforce.

For the Dominican Republic, ECLAC’s national gender-gap report identified a substantial difference in unemployment in 2023: 7.9% among women compared with 3.0% among men.

Participation and unemployment are relevant to earnings because the population receiving wages is not identical to the total working-age population. Women who are outside the labor force or unemployed are not represented in average wage calculations in the same way as people currently earning employment income.

Business Leadership Shows Another Layer of the Gap

Gender differences also appear at the level of business leadership. The ONE’s National Survey of Economic Activity (ENAE) measures formal employer businesses and identifies the sex of the company’s highest authority.

The latest figures reported from the ENAE 2025 show that 77.7% of formal employer businesses with 16 or more employees were led by a man, while 15.9% were led by a woman. Another 5.8% reported shared leadership between men and women, while 0.6% did not provide an answer.

The survey covers formal employer businesses rather than every business or every self-employed worker in the country. Its results therefore describe leadership within the formal business population included in the ENAE, not the entire Dominican economy.

The same data indicate that women’s representation is not uniform across industries. Female leadership is more common in accommodation and food services and in commerce, while male leadership is particularly dominant in electricity supply, mining and manufacturing.

Company Size Is Closely Connected to Female Representation

The distribution of leadership also changes with company size. Recent reporting based on the ENAE 2025 data indicates that women accounted for 18.9% of the highest authorities in businesses employing between 30 and 49 workers, compared with 12.7% in businesses with 250 or more employees.

The figures point to a concentration of female leadership in smaller formal businesses rather than the largest employers. That distinction matters because larger companies generally account for a greater share of employment, revenue and organizational hierarchy.

The ENAE data also show that businesses led by women are more concentrated in lower revenue categories. Among companies with revenues of up to RD$10 million, women-led firms represented 10.3% of the businesses in the cited distribution, compared with 7.9% for male-led firms. At the other end of the scale, businesses with revenues of RD$500 million or more had a 7.6% female-led share compared with 12.9% for male-led companies.

Women in Leadership Have High Educational Attainment

The leadership data provide another important contrast with the earnings figures. Women who head formal businesses can have high levels of educational attainment even though they remain a minority among the highest authorities.

According to reporting on the ENAE 2025 results, 55.9% of female business leaders had a university degree, while 26.0% had postgraduate education at the master’s or doctoral level.

This does not establish that education alone should determine access to leadership positions or compensation. It does demonstrate that the lower representation of women in senior business positions cannot simply be described as a consequence of women having lower educational attainment.

Why the National Wage Gap Is Not the Same as Unequal Pay for Equal Work

The phrase “gender pay gap” can describe several different statistical concepts. The distinction is essential when interpreting Dominican Republic data.

• Average earnings gap: compares the average income of women and men across the labor market.
• Hourly earnings gap: compares earnings per hour and reduces the effect of different working schedules.
• Monthly earnings gap: incorporates both hourly compensation and the number of hours worked.
• Comparable-job pay gap: attempts to compare workers performing the same or closely comparable work.
• Adjusted wage gap: controls statistically for selected characteristics such as education, occupation, industry, age or experience.

These measures should not be treated as interchangeable. A national average may be larger or smaller than an adjusted or same-position comparison because each measures a different part of the labor market.

What the Latest Data Say About Women’s Earnings

The Gap Is Larger in Some Parts of the Labor Market

The available evidence points to a layered pattern rather than a single Dominican gender wage gap. The difference is relatively smaller when looking at the national average hourly figures than in the cited informal-sector comparison. It can also change depending on occupation, industry, education, company size, working hours and seniority.

This helps explain why a woman with a university degree working in a formal professional occupation may have a very different earnings position from a woman working informally, even though both are included in the national statistics. The same principle applies to men: individual earnings cannot be inferred from sex alone.

The data also show why the transition from education to higher-paid employment matters. Women have made substantial gains in educational attainment, yet women remain concentrated in particular occupations and are less represented among the highest authorities of larger formal businesses.

What the Evidence Supports — and What It Does Not

The available statistics support several clear observations. Women have lower average hourly labor income than men in the Dominican Republic; the difference is substantially larger in the cited informal-sector figures; women face higher unemployment; women perform substantially more unpaid care work; and women are underrepresented among the highest authorities of formal employer businesses.

The statistics do not support the claim that one single factor explains the entire earnings difference. Education, occupation, industry, hours worked, employment formality, seniority, labor-force participation and access to leadership all interact with the earnings outcome.

Nor should the national average be described as a direct measure of discrimination in every workplace. The World Bank’s matched-worker research found a residual wage difference after controlling for observable characteristics in the period it studied, while more recent figures from Dominican institutions use different methodologies and reference periods. The safest comparison is therefore to identify precisely what each statistic measures rather than treating all reported percentages as one figure.

Where the Dominican Republic’s Gender Earnings Gap Stands

The most comparable national hourly figures available from the Dominican Republic show that women earned RD$128.1 per hour versus RD$143.5 for men in 2023. The informal-sector figures are considerably wider, at RD$102.8 for women versus RD$140.1 for men.

At the same time, the labor market contains a series of related disparities: women have a higher unemployment rate, spend substantially more time on unpaid care work, are concentrated in different economic activities and occupy a much smaller share of the top leadership positions in formal businesses.

For readers assessing women’s earnings in the Dominican Republic, the most meaningful picture therefore comes from looking beyond a single percentage. Hourly pay, monthly income, employment status, working time, occupation, industry and access to senior positions describe different dimensions of the same labor-market structure and help explain why the measured gap varies so significantly from one group of workers to another.