Equal Pay Day marks the day each year that men, on average, have already earned the average annual salary of women. In theory, women will work for free this year from 18 November.
Equal pay and financial independence are a prerequisite for real equality. Last year, women earned only 88.3 percent of an average man’s income.
The difference in hourly wages between women and men has remained almost unchanged at around 13 per cent since 2017.
Although there is a slight improvement from the previous year, it is slow going. Since 2020, the pay gap has only decreased by 0.8 percentage points. At today’s pace, it will take up to 50 years before we have equal pay in Norway.
If you read the comments section and debate posts on Equal Pay Day, you could think that we had come further. Some call it “the equal pay mess» and “same nonsense every year” day when FO or others point out structural pay differences.
It is often called a lie, imprecise or disproved by research.
But now the research has arrived.
Last week, the Institute for Social Research (ISF) published the report “Different pay for equal work?”which shows that the difference in hourly wages between women and men has remained almost unchanged at around 13 per cent since 2017.
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If we compare women and men in the same occupation, industry and sector – with the same length of education and experience – they still have a pay gap of around 8 per cent.
Even if we only compare colleagues with the same position code at the same employer, women earn approximately 6 percent less.
In other words: No matter how many and what caveats one takes, or how much mathematical gymnastics you are willing to do, the calculation never reaches zero. Unequal pay is an indisputable fact.
The question now is what we choose to do with this information.
The Equality Act states that women and men must have equal pay for “work of equal value”. The problem is that it has long been difficult to define what “equal value” means.
Do lawyers have higher value than midwives? Are offshore workers more valuable than care workers? We need everyone to keep society going, and pitting professions against each other like that doesn’t get us far.
Unequal pay is a structural problem; therefore, it requires structural solutions.
The ISF proposes a work assessment that combines factors such as competence, responsibility, physical effort, demanding working conditions and psychological stress to determine whether different occupations are equal.
FO is the trade union for social workers. Our members all have higher education. Most work with children and adults in vulnerable life situations. High demands are placed on ethical and professional assessments, because the work has major consequences for other people’s lives.
Many of them experienced that their job was defined as critical for society during the pandemic. In addition, they are more exposed to violence, threats and harassment than others in the working world. Yet these professions are not valued enough in our society.
This discrimination in relation to valuation undermines the enormous values ​​that female-dominated professions create every single day.
The fact that children finish school, that people return to work and that those who fall outside are included in society has great socio-economic value – in addition to the inherent value of Norway being a welfare state.
So how do we close this valuation gap?
Unequal pay is a structural problem; therefore, it requires structural solutions. To avoid it taking 50 years before we have equal pay, both the parties in working life and the politicians must work actively to reduce the differences.
If we don’t start soon, today’s students will reach retirement age before we have real equality in Norway.
We need both measures that reduce inexplicable differences in one and the same workplace, and the pay gap between the tariff areas in the private and public sector.
It doesn’t happen overnight. But if we don’t start soon, today’s students will have to reach retirement age before we have real equality in Norway.
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Here are five measures to ensure that equal pay does not take 50 years:
- Using the activity and reporting duty (ARP) actively to reduce the inexplicable salary differences between colleagues in the same workplace.
- Introduce work assessments to define equal work and ensure that work of equal value is actually paid equally.
- Develop national indicators based on these assessments to measure and highlight unequal pay for work of equal value across occupations and sectors.
- Establish binding cooperation between the parties in working life and the authorities to systematically equalize differences across tariff areas. This is a prerequisite for being able to promote female-dominated professions in the public sector, especially within the framework of the front-line profession.
- Actually read the gender equality research and take it seriously. There is no shortage of reports, statistics and research showing that we have unequal pay in Norway. Nevertheless, it has become a years-long tradition that we would rather discuss whether we have pay differences than what we should do to equalize them.
It is time to take action, to ensure that our daughters do not have to fight the same battles that our mothers did.
We will not be treated equally until we achieve equal pay. We will not achieve equal pay as long as we as a society accept that female-dominated professions are valued and paid less. We will not close the valuation gap without women raising their voices and getting involved in the social debate.
Equal pay does not come by itself. It is time to take action, to ensure that our daughters do not have to fight the same battles that our mothers did.
Now is the time for action.