The discrimination against women in job and salary in Tunisia.

A woman's right to work is enshrined in national legislation, both in the private sector than in the public. The legal texts governing the sector pledging equal rights between men and women.

The article 11 of the General Statute of State employees, local authorities and public institutions, it pledging equal access to public employment and it prohibits discrimination. This principle was indicated both in terms of assumptions in terms of career development and compensation.

Same thing is enshrined in the private sector and in collective agreements.

With the law of 17 February 2000 were repealed some articles of the Code of Obligations and Contracts resolved to provisions that require the consent of the husband for the work of his wife.

The monthly wage in the private sector is about 557 dinars. Bonuses and overtime represent 14% of salary.

These data were observed through a survey conducted in April 2011 by the Center for Research and Social Studies under the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Another information that emerges from this survey is that 63% of workers in the private sector are male, while 37% are female.

This data, in itself is disconcerting, it is compounded by the fact that the average net salary of men is 29% higher than that of women.

Salaries in the private sector increases with the level of education received.

In the agricultural sector, workers' salaries are in line with that of workers in the same category, but results in a 15% lower for the remuneration of the female workforce, thus abrogating the establishment of a minimum salary in this sector.

The debate on inequalities between men and women is also apparent in the employment sector, where women are being penalized with low salaries, less responsibility and more discrimination.

The situation that emerges in Tunisia appears to be paradoxical, as the average of the girls with a school career of the most successful it is higher than that of males, but women have more difficulties to enter the world of work than men.

To pledge the full enjoyment of women's right to pay without discrimination, the Tunisian legislation has planned inspections to check the correct application of labor relations organizational legal, regulatory and contractual.

Violation of these rules will be subject to criminal and administrative penalties.

Sources:

http://www.espacemanager.com/tunisie-le-salaire-des-hommes-superieur-de-29-celui-des-femmes-dans-le-prive.html

http://www.radiomfm.tn/fr/actualite/details/5104/La-discrimination-au-travail-touche-plus-les-femmes-que-les-hommes.html

http://www.femmes.tn/fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=95

The Gender Pay Gap in Serbia

If you are a woman in the labour market, pay attention to not fall down in a gap or to not hit your head against a glass ceiling!

Before talking about gender pay gap and glass ceiling it may be useful to give some definitions.

Gender pay gap is defined by the European Commission as: "the difference between men’s and women’s pay, based on the average difference in gross hourly earnings of all employees."

As far as Glass ceiling is concerned, Ann Morrison describes the problem: the glass ceiling is a barrier "so subtle that it is transparent, yet so strong that it prevents women from moving up the corporate hierarchy", women can see the high-level corporate positions but are kept from "reaching the top" (Breaking the Glass Ceiling, 1994). The glass ceiling is invisible but real, barriers that prevent women from reaching high level working positions and they are due to different factors, but the most important are prejudice and discrimination.

Some EU institutions, like EIGE, has done research and studies about these problems by monitoring the situation among different EU member States.

But for what concerns countries which are not part of EU, like Serbia, informations are very poor or even lacking. But it seems that things are going to change. As a matter of fact, on the 20th of October 2014, EIGE published this title: "Serbia will be the first country outside the EU to build a gender equality index based on the Gender Equality Index of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). EIGE experts investigated the possibilities during an official visit on 14 and 15 October and concluded that it is relevant and technically feasible to construct such an Index in Serbia: Serbia has the appropriate statistical know-how and expertise to do so."

Until we wait for the Gender Equality Index, there is a recent study: "Gender Pay Gap in the Western Balkan Countries: Evidence from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia" (2013), that is useful to analyse in order to understand gender pay gap in Serbia. According to new research conducted by a team of two think-tanks, The Belgrade-based Foundation for the Advancement of Economics (FREN) and the Skoplje-based University American College Skopje (UACS): in Serbia, women employees have higher qualifications than men, but yet they still earn less. 

For a better understanding of the statistical results produced, we need to distinguish between "raw/unadjusted gender wage gap" and "true/adjusted wage gap". The first one is a simple difference in the average female vs. male wage. The second one is calculated using econometric methods that make it possible to compare women with men, holding the same work characteristics - such as education level or years of work experience – in addition to the comparison of women and men within the same occupation or sector of activity. In Serbia, the unadjusted gap is 3.3%, while the adjusted gap is 11%. Practically, this difference means that, when the labour market characteristics are taken into consideration, the pay gap raises. So the adjusted gap shows that in Serbia women and a men doing the same work, despite they have same work characteristics, men are still paid more than women. This result clearly underlines that the wage gap has nothing to do with professional skills but it is strictly related to gender discrimination based on some prejudice: men are more authoritative, women are less flexible with working hours due to their family responsibilities, etc.

Due to the particular structure of the Serbian labour market, it is important to analyse the gender wage gap separately in public and private sector. 

As it is shown in the graphic below, the wage gap in Serbia is bigger in the private sector as a result of the glass ceiling. In the public sector the wage gap is the same in law paid and high paid work positions, while in private sector the wage gap for low paid profiles is 5.5% and it is 14% for the high paid positions.

References:

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/files/gender_pay_gap/gpg_brochure_2013_final_en.pdf

http://www.rrpp-westernbalkans.net/en/News/Research-Results--Gender-Pay-Gap-in-the-Western-Balkan-Countries--Evidence-from-Serbia--Montenegro-and-Macedonia/mainColumnParagraphs/0/text_files/file0/Policy%20briefs_gender%20pay%20gap.pdf

http://eige.europa.eu/apps/gei/content/Gender-Equality-Index-Country-Profiles.pdf

http://eige.europa.eu/content/news-article/eiges-gender-equality-index-invigorates-serbias-path-to-gender-equality

http://www.b92.net/biz/vesti/srbija.php?yyyy=2013&mm=02&dd=21&nav_id=688849

The gender pay gap in Belgium

Nowadays, finding a job in Belgium is not a piece of cake, especially for women. Employers are not keen on hiring them because they do not want to give them a maternity leave when they decide to have children or because they simply underestimate their skills. And when they do find a job, women are not allowed the same income as their male colleagues. This blog post is going to analyze the case of the gender pay gap in Belgium but we will see that, sadly, this kind of discrimination is present all over the world.

 

In Belgium, women are on average paid 10.2% less than men for the exact same work. This percentage is calculated comparing the salary of men and women who are working for the exact same amount of hours. If we compare the monthly salary of Belgian men and women, the gap increases to 21% because a lot of women only work part-time. 45.8% of Belgian women work part-time, sometimes they want to combine work with their family life, but sometimes they did not choose not to work full-time. The average pay gap between men and women in Europe is 16.2%.

Every year, the Global Gender Gap Index releases a chart ranking 142 countries of the world according to their score concerning the gender pay gap issue. The score is a number between 0 and 1. 0 corresponds to inequality between men and women’s salary and 1 corresponds to equality between both salaries.

http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014/rankings/

As you can see from the chart, sadly no country reaches the score of 1, meaning that there is not one single country on this planet that offers the same amount of money to a woman working for the same job as a man. The countries with the highest scores are the Scandinavians countries, with at least 0.8/1. Belgium is ranked number 10, with a score of 0.7809/1, which is not too bad considering the 142 countries included in this chart. Italy is ranked number 69 with a score of 0.6973/1. The countries at the very bottom of this chart are Syria, Chad, Pakistan and Yemen with a very poor score of only 0.5/1 which means that in these countries, men are paid twice as much as women.

Since 1957, the Belgian law stipulates that men and women must have the same salary for the same work. However, many companies have found a way to avoid abiding by this rule. They give different names to two functions so that they have a valid reason to pay the male employee more than the female employee. The two functions are called differently but everyone knows that the jobs are exactly the same.

Belgium is actually the first country of the European Union that has organized the Equal Pay Day, in 2005. The Equal Pay Day consists in raising people’s awareness about the gender pay gap. It was initially created in the United States in 1990. The date on which the Equal Pay Date is held is calculated in a very precise way: we calculate the date until which a woman should work in order to earn the same salary as a man who works from the 1st of January until the 31^st of December. The Equal Pay Day usually takes place in March. In 2014, the Belgian Equal Pay Day took place on the 18^th of March, this means that a woman should work exactly 14 months and 18 days to earn the very same amount of money that a man would have earned in 12 months. In other words, a woman would work two months and eighteen days for nothing.

Here is the link to 2 videos, created for the Equal Pay Day, whose aim is to raise awareness about the gender pay gap: http://www.equalpayday.be/EN/

 

Sources:

http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014/rankings/

http://www.jobat.be/fr/articles/les-femmes-gagnent-encore-toujours-102-en-moins-que-leurs-collegues-masculins/

http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/l-ecart-salarial-hommefemme-reste-present-en-belgique-52a5dd1e357004c37c89d1b1

http://www.equalpayday.be/NL/documenten/dossier2014EN.pdf

Gender pay gap: the case of Italy

The gender pay gap is a complex phenomenon, caused by a number of factors. One of these is definitely the discrimination suffered by women in the workplace. Very often the professionalism of the female figure is underestimated. Other factors are surely due by tradition and by gender roles, which determine the place of women and men in society right from their early age.

Finally, women usually choose part-time jobs in order to combine family and working life. The wage gap is in fact higher for women with children or part-time jobs. Women usually spend more time at home and with children while men rarely take parental leave or choose part-time jobs. The working day of a man at work is usually longer, but if you add up the hours paid and unpaid, a woman works definitely more.

The ninth edition of the Global Gender Gap Report, a study that takes into account women's participation in economic life and work in 142 countries, has placed Italy in the bottom of the ranking concerning participation in political and economic life. Unlike other sectors, such as health and education, where the gender gap is almost non-existent, we can’t say the same in terms of wages.

On this last aspect Italy is confirmed the tail-end among the developed countries. We are in fact in the last place in Europe, in the 114^th place in the overall standings, and in the 129^th  place regarding equal pay for equal work. The Observatory JobPricing provided a statistic showing where there are the main differences in compensation between men and women in the four main levels: Executives, Managers, Employees and Workers.

http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2014/11/15/news/gender_gap_in_italia_soffrono_di_pi_le_impiegate_guadagnano_3mila_euro_meno_dei_colleghi-100571355/

As we can see in the chart, on the average we have a gap of 7.2% in wages, with men who earn about € 2,000 more than women. We can notice that, the biggest gap is in salaries of employees, with a discrepancy that exceeds 10%. In the sector of management, the gender pay gap is of about 8%, in fact, even if women manage to access to the highest positions of corporate hierarchies, they still earn € 8,000 less than their male colleagues.

February 28^th is the 59^th day of the year. February 28^th is the perfect day to celebrate the "European Day for equal pay 'for men and women. Data coming from the European Commission report are clear: "The gender pay gap, which is the difference between the average hourly wage of men and women in the whole economy, has remained almost unchanged in the last years and is still about 16%. The 16% a year, is tantamount to 59 days since January 1^st until today, so in other words, it is as if from the beginning of the year to February 28, women have worked "to zero wage" than men. 

Sources:

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/files/gender_pay_gap/140319_gpg_it.pdf

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/gender-pay-gap/index_en.htm

http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2014/11/15/news/gender_gap_in_italia_soffrono_di_pi_le_impiegate_guadagnano_3mila_euro_meno_dei_colleghi-100571355/