Equal Pay Day 2015
The European Union has designated today as Equal Pay Day, an initiative to raise public awareness, companies, managers and the entire business community about the gender pay gap.
By studying average hourly wages in EU countries, it has emerged that women earn 84 cents for every euro earned by men. The difference between the wages of women and men is 16.3%, equivalent to 59 working days: from today until the end of the year it is as if women worked for free. The gap grows with age: for example, in Finland, it goes from 6.3% for under 25s to over 25% for over 64s. Since 2006, when a 17.7% was recorded, improvements have been minimal. In Italy the gap is 7.3%.
As Commissioners Thyssen (Employment) and Jourova (Justice) explain, this unjust and unjustified difference then translates, in the long term, into an even more significant pension gap of 39% due also to the greater likelihood of women having intermittent careers.
Possible criticisms also fall: the lower salary cannot be attributed to the greater recourse to part-time work, as the calculations are estimated on an hourly basis. The gap is also recorded at the highest levels, denying the justification linked to the on average less qualified positions held by women. It is instead evident the difficulty for a woman to climb the professional pyramid: among CEOs less than 3% are women. Finally, it is necessary to consider the greater time dedicated by women to unpaid activities such as housework and childcare.
According to a Eurobarometer survey, one in three Europeans believes that, among gender inequalities, the pay gap is the first to be addressed urgently. Following this, the fight against prejudices about the image and roles of men and women and therefore the explosion of violence against women.
Both issues have been the focus of the two-year Pubblicità Progresso campaign “Punto su di te” with the aim of raising awareness and obtaining the active participation of all to ensure that women are valued in terms of greater respect, esteem and opportunities.
The first phase raised the issue of sex discrimination, addressing in an original way the various faces of discrimination (at work, in the family, in couple relationships, etc.) starting from the concept that the first form of discrimination consists in denying its existence. The identification and recognition of it is, in fact, the first condition to be able to definitively fight it.
In the second phase, an equally discriminatory attitude towards salaries on the part of headhunters and employers is denounced. With a memorable and creative language, the pay discrimination that women suffer is highlighted.
The clear and direct message is also reiterated through the press campaign: “Being a woman is still a complicated job. Let’s give it its due value.”
