Pope says women, men pay gap is pure scandal

Pope Francis says it is a “pure scandal” that female employees earn less than male employees who are doing the same job.

“Why is it taken for granted that women must earn less than men? No! They have the same rights,” Francis said during his general audience in the Vatican on Wednesday.

According to the statistics agency Eurostat and the US Census Bureau, women were paid 16.4 percent less than men on average in the EU in 2013, and women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns in the US.

“We should support with decisiveness the right to equal pay for equal work," he added.

The Pope also criticized the attitude of those who say women working out of the house are to blame for the crisis in families, saying that such attitude is a type of "machismo" that reveals men "want to dominate women."

Only about 18 percent of the employees of the Holy See - the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome - are female.

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