New EU Measures Target Pay Discrimination Against Women

The European Union is launching new pay transparency requirements aimed at helping to identify pay discrimination against women and to decrease the gender pay gap. At the same time, Croatia has not yet finished making the legislative adjustments required for the transposition of the directive to its domestic law.

Directive (EU) 2023/970 was one of the crucial components of the European Strategy for Gender Equality laid down in May 2023 design to significantly reduce the gender pay gap through more transparency and improved ways to enforce the rules.

Even though the concept of equal pay for equal work has been established in Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the European bodies have repeatedly pointed out that women, in practice, may not be benefiting from this principle at all times.

Key Highlight:

• New European Union Regulations Aimed at Closing Gender Pay Gap Have Been Launched
• European women earn 11.1% less per hour compared to their male colleagues
• These steps include enhanced salary transparency and anti-discrimination regulations

The European Commission keeps emphasizing that female pay discrimination is concealed because it's hard to figure out if women are paid less than men doing the same or equally valuable work due to non-transparent pay systems.

Eurostat statistics for 2024 reveal that women in the European Union received 11.1 percent less on average per hour than men. In Croatia, the figure is 6.6 percent, which is lower than the European average, yet officials warn that gender as a basis for pay difference is still present.

New regulations include a number of measures aimed at helping women to recognize and fight against pay inequality. For example, prospective employees will be given details of initial pay or pay scales prior to starting a job, companies will be banned from asking about the candidates' prior earnings, and employees will have a right to inquire about the factors used in deciding compensation and advancement.

In addition, bigger companies will have to make gender pay differences public, and women who suffer from discriminatory treatment will be eligible for a remedy; in some cases, the employer will be required to prove their case.

Commenting on the order, the Vice-Chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, Marko Vešligaj (SDP), conveyed that the main aim is to empower workers and foster fairer pay systems through increasing the level of transparency and strengthening the right to equal pay. He explained that these changes are supposed to help lessen the gender pay gap, which still leaves women as the disadvantaged group in most member countries.

Marko pointed out that the difficulties women encounter in the labour market quite often prevail into their old age, citing the fact that women in the EU get pensions that are, on average, roughly a quarter lower than those of men. On top of that, he said that the talks in the European Parliament centered on the duties of the employers, especially SMEs, the reporting limits, and the methods of enforcement and sanctions.