Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

The gender pay gap: where to start?

Marina Lalovic 24th June 2019

The gender pay gap in the EU remains stubbornly wide. Unpacking it highlights its wide social ramifications.

gender pay gap

Marina Lalovic

A figure has become a symbol for gender inequality in the European Union—16 per cent. It’s the gender pay gap. To tackle it, we first need to define what it represents. It is not only that different amounts of money are paid to men and women in companies they work for but that they are differentially represented within their work environments.

The gender pay gap was the theme of an event organised by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Dublin this month. Jolanta Reingarde, the research and statistics programme co-ordinator of EuroGender, explained that women’s employment rates and working hours were also lower than men’s—with over 8 per cent of women aged 20-64 never having worked, compared with 3 per cent of men. The accumulated impact of gender inequalities in employment resulted in a 40 per cent gender gap in overall net yearly earnings and, over the life course, a consequent 37 per cent gender gap in pensions to the disadvantage of women.

Yet only 30 per cent of the gender pay gap can be thus explained. This uncertainty in contextualising the numbers stems from the complexity of assessing discrimination in hiring, gender differences in career choice and the perceived contrast in the duties of women and men at home.

Biggest gap

EIGE’s research shows that the gender pay gap is biggest—at 48 per cent—in couples with children younger than seven. For men, having children doesn’t evoke financial crisis—on the contrary, it is rewarding: motherhood is associated with higher salaries for fathers. This is not the case on the female side of the household.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

Flexibility at work is, relatedly, a crucial issue. For men, the more money they earn the more flexibility they enjoy. For women, on the other hand, while flexibility is much more significant in terms of work-life balance, it doesn’t increase with income.

Age is also very relevant. Young graduates entering the labour market are virtually unaffected: for them the gender pay gap is only 3.3 per cent. The greatest gap, 21.9 per cent, is among the 40-49 years cohort—related once again to having a family.

Education is important too: perhaps counter-intuitively, the higher the education, the higher the pay gap. Hungary records the worst gap among those with tertiary education. Segregation is also an important consideration when it comes to education.

The Czech Republic meanwhile reports the highest gender gap among the richest. Regarding type of business, while finance and insurance has the best gender balance it has the highest pay gap as well. Arts and entertainment is the sector where the pay gap is the highest among the young.

Action plan

For the first time in 2017, the European Commission adopted an action plan to tackle the gender pay gap. It lists a broad set of measures, including combating occupational segregation and the caring penalty and raising awareness of inequalities and stereotypes.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Occupational segregation is both horizontal and vertical. Horizontal segregation refers to the concentration of women and men in different sectors and activities. Vertical segregation refers to their concentration in different grades, level of responsibility or positions.

Pay transparency is one of the most important measures to tackle the gender pay gap. Sweden has made most progress in this regard: employees have a right to information about the pay of their colleagues, on which companies with more than ten employees have to report. Collective bargaining is supposed to comply with the legislation as well.

Ireland has been rolling out gender-pay reporting, starting with the largest companies. Kara McGann, senior labour-market policy executive with the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation and one of the guests at the EIGE meeting, said: ‘As a tool, it’s actually measuring gender representation in an organisation. It might tell us that we don’t have women in the senior positions and that women work part-time more often than men and when we know that it will really help us to get action around gender parity.’

Nurses and policemen

The greatest difficulty is to define equal value across professions. For instance, is it feasible to compare the work of nurses and policemen?

Strong national equality bodies are necessary and collective action is much more important than that by individuals. And if there are no sanctions, there won’t be appropriate outcomes either.

Inclusive language is also crucial, including for raising awareness. At the EIGE conference in Dublin, its new toolkit on gender-sensitive communication was presented. Sometimes we think that we are inclusive if we’re gender-blind. Not so. The toolkit helps us to avoid sexist, gender-discriminatory and gender-biased language. But it also suggests that carefully gender-blind language can diminish the role of women. Gender-sensitive language is to be favoured.

Marina Lalovic

Marina Lalovic is a Serbian journalist based in Rome. She works at Radio Rai 3, where she is one of the hosts of Radio3Mondo, a radio show focused on news from around the world. She was previously a correspondent for the Serbian daily Politika and for the broadcaster B92. Currently she is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.

Home ・ Politics ・ The gender pay gap: where to start?

Most Popular Posts

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative,conservatism Boris Johnson: blustering onPaul Mason
deglobalisation,deglobalization,Davos Getting deglobalisation rightJoseph Stiglitz
schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza

Most Recent Posts

public services,public service,women,public service workers Public services should not be the victims of inflationIrene Ovonji-Odida
gdp,gross domestic product Let’s count what really mattersJayati Ghosh
green transition,just transition,fossil fuel,energy transition,Ukraine,Russia Ukraine and the geopolitics of the energy transitionBéla Galgóczi and Paolo Tomassetti
energy,efficiency,generation,solar,price,inflation From subsidising energy to reducing dependenceHans Dubois
SPO,Rendi-Wagner,Austria,social democratic,social democrat,social democracy A social-democratic decade ahead?Robert Misik

Other Social Europe Publications

National recovery and resilience plans
The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

ETUI/ETUC conference: A Blueprint for Equality

Join us at the three-day hybrid conference ‘A blueprint for equality’ (22-24 June).

The case against inequality has already been strongly articulated. Inequality is not just incidental to a particular crisis but a structural problem created by an economic model. Now is the time to explore what real equality should look like.

As a media partner of this event, Social Europe is delighted to invite you to this three-day conference, organised by the ETUI and ETUC. More than 90 speakers from the academic world, international organisations, trade unions and NGOs will participate, including the economist Thomas Piketty and the European commissioner Nicolas Schmit.


MORE INFOMATION HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Minimum wages in 2022: annual review

Nominal minimum wage rates rose significantly in 2022, compared with 2021. In 20 of the 21 European Union member states with statutory minimum wages, rates increased. When inflation is taken into account, however, the minimum wage increased in real terms in only six member states. If current inflation trends continue, minimum wages will barely grow at all in real terms in any country in 2022.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube