Comparing Pay Transparency Measures to Tackle the Gender Pay Gap: Best Practices and Challenges in Belgium, Denmark and Iceland

• Published in: SSRN Electronic Journal
• Main Author: Benedi lahuerta, Sara
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/480211/

Gender differences in pay for the same work or work of equal value have been outlawed in many countries for a long time. Traditionally, most of the efforts to address them focused on remedial action via equal pay claims taken by individual workers, or in best-case scenarios, by a group of workers through joint claims or collective complaints (e.g. class actions). In some contexts, they have also been at least partly addressed via collective bargaining. In the light of the persisting Gender Pay Gap (GPG) (still at 14.1 % in 2019 for the EU-27) and the widespread understanding that gender pay discrimination is unacceptable, yet very common, a relatively large number of jurisdictions have introduced pay transparency measures as a regulatory strategy to reduce the GPG as part of a broader policy mix. These measures are generally aimed at disclosing pay information to different groups of stakeholders in order to understand the sources of inequity and advance towards gender pay equity. Yet they also raise concerns on various fronts, i.e. they involve disclosing sensitive personal data and may add costs for employers, which may be more difficult to bear for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).