February 22: European Equal Pay Day. Work the same, get paid the same
There is a very famous video in which several couples made up of a boy and a girl are asked to do a task in exchange for a reward. When they put some colored balls in their corresponding vase they will receive a prize. But, surprise, what the girls receive is a smaller amount of candy than their peers. The faces they make leave no one indifferent, and when a voice-over assures that if the girls have fewer sweets it is simply because they are girls, the comments are those that any sensible person would make: “it's not fair”, “we did the same job”, “she was as good as me” or “there is no difference between boys and girls”. The final message is forceful:
Unequal pay is unacceptable in the eyes of children. Why should adults accept it? Let's work to change it
To raise awareness in society about the injustice of the gender pay gap, Spain and the EU promote Equal Pay Day every February 22, with the aim of encouraging Member States to adopt effective measures to eradicate it and highlight that this injustice is still in force, that women and men do not earn the same for doing the same work or work of equal value. Regardless of their age, the sector in which they are employed, the type of contract or hours, they always have to work harder to earn the same as their colleagues.
The facts illustrate a reality that is evident in news and sentences that we can read almost daily. According to analyzes by CSIF, the main civil servants' union, the ERTE, temporary employment regulation files, increased the wage gap between women and men to 34.6% during the pandemic. According to the latest data on the wage gap in Spain obtained by the Tax Agency, corresponding to 2020, the first year of the pandemic, the wage gap stood at 20.29%. If we look at another source, the National Institute of Statistics, its latest Annual Salary Structure Survey, published in 2021 and prepared in 2019, the gap is 19.5%: the average earnings for men were close to 27,000 euros while for women it is barely close to 21,700 euros. That year, 25.7% of women had incomes less than or equal to the minimum interprofessional wage compared to 11.1% of men.
Fraternidad-Muprespa does not divert the focus that must necessarily be placed on this issue and remains firmly committed to acting in this area, through initiatives such as the Equality Commission, established in 2008 to comply with the provisions of the Equality Law, or the Equality Plan. Currently, the IV is about to be approved and it maintains important commitments to maintain policies and measures aimed at observing measures in accordance with the General Human Resources Policy.
