News

On average women earn 16% less than men across the EU. This is due to many reasons: for example, women are more likely to work part-time or take career breaks to better reconcile work and family life, or tend to work in lower level and lower paid jobs. This has severe consequences for their pensions: across the EU women’s pensions are on average 37% less than men’s.

At the end of May, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) published a research note on ‘Tackling the gender pay gap: not without a better work-life balance’. The publication breaks down the interplay between labour market participation and patterns of existing gender norms, and shows how this impacts the gender pay gap throughout different stages of life.

Some interesting findings:

• For couples with children under the age of seven, the gender pay gap reaches 48% (the highest across all life stages). This can be explained by part-time work or career breaks of women, but also by the significant increase in earnings of men during that period in life.
• The gender pay gap is lower among employees working longer hours on a regular basis.

More findings can be found here.

Read Social Platform’s position on investing in services and work-life balance to improve gender equality (2016).