inland announced that it is preparing a law that allows citizens access to the salaries of their co-workers whenever they suspect discrimination. Transparency, also applied to salaries, is a tendency to reduce inequalities: in which stage are we in Portugal?
The ranking of equal pay by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reveals that at the end of last year, in Finland, women earned on average 17.2% less than men in the same position, pushing the country towards the 37th position on the list. The Nordic country's government has now announced that it is planning to move forward with legislation that allows professionals to know how much their colleagues earn if they suspect wage discrimination, in at atempt to reduce the income gap between men and women.
In addition to Finland, there are other countries with similar measures. In Denmark, for example, companies with 35 or more employees are required to disclose specific wage information by gender. In the UK, companies with more than 250 employees have to publish the salary gap since 2017: this gap has narrowed over time, according to the national statistics office. In Spain, in April of 2021, a salary record by gender was implemented with the aim of greater transparency. In the US, in states such as California, Nevada and Colorado, measures are in process or have already been passed to introduce legislation that says employers must provide job seekers with more information about how much they pay current workers.
In March 2021, the European Commission presented a proposal on salary transparency to ensure that women and men in the EU receive equal pay for equal work. In Portugal, despite women having higher levels of education, they earn only 73-78% of what their male peers make.
In March 2021, the European Commission presented a proposal on salary transparency to ensure that women and men in the EU receive equal pay for equal work. In Portugal, despite women having higher levels of education, they earn only 73-78% of what their male peers make.
In what comes to legislation that promotes equal pay, Carla Tavares, president of the Commission for Equality in Labour and Employment (CITE), considers Portugal "far ahead". "What we have, from a legislation point of view, is enough. The path that remains for us to take is that of mentalities. Entities need to understand that women cannot be discriminated against and penalised for reasons inherent to their gender", she stresses, in the ReFLEXions by Coverflex entitled "Salary transparency: how, when and why?"
Launched by Portuguese Women in Tech (PWiT), the project "Salary Transparency" - a database where professionals from different areas related to technology can share their salaries in specific functions - was born in line with the organisation's mission - to support women in technology - and, indirectly, to help combat the gender pay gap. "We know that, in Portugal, these topics are not talked about very often, and we wanted, in a simple and anonymous way, to give people the opportunity to say how much they earn to give others the opportunity to consult these amounts", explains Inês Santos Silva, co-founder of the project.
Launched by Portuguese Women in Tech (PWiT), the project "Salary Transparency" - a database where professionals from different areas related to technology can share their salaries in specific functions - was born in line with the organisation's mission - to support women in technology - and, indirectly, to help combat the gender pay gap. "We know that, in Portugal, these topics are not talked about very often, and we wanted, in a simple and anonymous way, to give people the opportunity to say how much they earn to give others the opportunity to consult these amounts", explains Inês Santos Silva, co-founder of the project.
According to Carla Tavares, the challenge of wage negotiation, especially among women professionals, led to the creation of this database, which is updated monthly. "What we know is that, when entering the job market, the wage gap is very low. I think that for every euro a man earns, a woman earns 92 or 93 cents: there is a difference but it is relatively low. Inequality increases significantly when women are mothers: starting to be seen as less available for new challenges, they are less often promoted. Unlike men who, when they are fathers, start to be seen as more responsible", she points out. For this reason, the launch of "Salary transparency" laid the groundwork for, more than a solution, tools in the form of data that give women more information when entering the labour market, negotiating wages or even at a life stage as challenging as going back to work after being mothers.
For Pedro Moura, CMO at Landing.jobs, company that, every year, publishes a national study on salaries in tech, the path can start before any job, in the attribution of chores at home and, above all, the issue must be looked at from a competitiveness point of view, more than as a measure that ends in itself. "The first thing to change is the cultural part of managers, so they are more aware of these challenges and see salary transparency as a practice that brings advantages for organisations, and to know the real importance of diversity measures as a huge factor of competitiveness, especially in contemporary times", he points out, adding: "We tend to forget the issue of 'there’s a reason for it to be this way’, it’s not a good in itself. There is work to be done from the point of view of shaping public opinion in this regard. There are factors and variables associated with wage inequality, and why it should exist as a differentiating factor, which can be called into question. As there are more men in senior positions, there will be a natural bias to pay women less. It is against these things that we have to fight". Landing.jobs’ CMO underlines further: "There will be more problems the more the economy is oriented toward low value. (...) The government can help here, when it comes to promoting factors that take into account the competitiveness of companies, namely inclusion and diversity".
"The first thing to change is the cultural part of managers, so they are more aware of these challenges and see salary transparency as a practice that brings advantages for organisations, and to know the real importance of diversity measures as a huge factor of competitiveness, especially in contemporary times", he points out, adding: "We tend to forget the issue of 'there’s a reason for it to be this way’, it’s not a good in itself. There is work to be done from the point of view of shaping public opinion in this regard. There are factors and variables associated with wage inequality, and why it should exist as a differentiating factor, which can be called into question. As there are more men in senior positions, there will be a natural bias to pay women less. It is against these things that we have to fight". Landing.jobs’ CMO underlines further: "There will be more problems the more the economy is oriented toward low value. (...) The government can help here, when it comes to promoting factors that take into account the competitiveness of companies, namely inclusion and diversity".
Greater salary transparency can, therefore, be an active factor in reducing inequalities between men and women, and also a reflection of an organisational strategy toward contemporaneity. "I'm an advocate of greater transparency and in this case, in what comes to salaries, there is an advance in maturity here of which it is very important to be aware", emphasises Pedro Moura.
For Carla Tavares, this path is, above all, teamwork. "We cannot always wait for someone to come and bring a miraculous solution: it has to be a joint action of all entities".
You can see the full conversation here.
