Are we close to closing the wage gap?

The gender pay gap is not only explained by the wage difference for doing the same job, but by a series of conditions that put women at a complete disadvantage: temporary contracts, part-time work, lack of promotion, short professional careers, penalization of care tasks and maternity.

After the first year of maternity, women's salaries are cut by 11%, while those of men remain unchanged, and in the long term the gap widens to 28% after the birth of the first child. In order to compensate for the effect of the care provided by women on their contribution career, the supplement for the reduction of the gender gap in pensions was introduced in 2021". (Data extracted from the study "The child penalty in Spain". Alicia de Quinto, Laura Hospido and Carlos Sanz. Bank of Spain, 2020).

Wage inequality manifests itself more profoundly as age increases.

Indeed, we are talking about age discrimination: "The most pronounced differences occur in the 50-54 and 55-59 age groups, periods in which the wage gap reaches 7,096 euros and 6,957 euros respectively, which implies that women's wages in these age groups should increase by 30% and 28% respectively," says the report Equal Pay Now: for real equality. Against the wage gap, presented by CC.OO.

According to the latest report by Comisiones Obreras, women earn 5,252 euros less per year than men. The latest figures we have date from 2019 (INE) and place in a wage gap of 24% being Aragon and Navarre the communities with a higher gap. According to the union, this is due to the temporary nature of the jobs performed by women: 25% of women work part-time, compared to 7% of men. While for them it is something cyclical that occurs in the first years of working life, for women it becomes structural.

"In addition, 49% of women who have a part-time contract do not do so voluntarily, but because they cannot find a full-time job; and 14% have a voluntary part-time contract because they must take care of dependent or minor care tasks, mostly performed by women."

Can companies alone address the pay gap?

Despite the fact that, since last April 2020, companies have been obliged to prepare and submit a pay audit that includes the evaluation of jobs, carried out according to the criteria of adequacy, completeness and objectivity and that allows to detect whether for the same job there is a difference in salaries between men and women, according to a recent survey conducted by Connecting Visions, only 36% of the companies surveyed claim to have prepared and submitted such an audit. Twenty-four percent confirm that they have detected salary gaps for positions above 25% and only 16% say they have established measures to correct these deviations. Finally, 12% consider that this measure has had some impact on the improvement of their compensation policy.

If we delve deeper into the reasons for such poor results, we see that 52% of these companies consider that the processes and guidelines provided by the competent bodies are not sufficiently clear and do not allow them to address, easily and without external professional help, the study and analysis of the pay gap within their company.

For all these reasons, the role played by professionals and experts who advise companies in all processes related to the Equality Law makes a difference. Companies that have good external advice are able to comply with the regulations without major difficulties, but above all they are able to find solutions that bring them real benefits and contribute to effectively reduce the pay gap.

Source: https://today90.com