London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Sep 22, 2025

Will publishing salaries help gender equality in Europe's workplaces?

Will publishing salaries help gender equality in Europe's workplaces?

If you’re a woman working in Europe, you’re earning on average almost 15% less than a man, often for the same work. That means that for every euro a man earns, on average a woman earns 86 cents.

At the top, women in management earn nearly a quarter less than men. In Europe, only 10% of big-company CEOs are women. This all contributes to an even wider pension gap of 30%.

What creates the gender pay gap?

Women still take on most of the childcare which means they often reduce their working hours. A third of women in the EU work part-time compared to 8% of men. This makes it harder for women to progress in their careers. There are also more women in lower-paid sectors like caring and education.

The lockdowns have shown just how entrenched these gender inequalities are, with women taking on most of the extra unpaid childcare. They have also been most at risk of losing their jobs during the pandemic.

The European Pillar of Social Rights sets out the need for gender equality. To help close the gender pay gap, the European Commission is introducing pay transparency so companies will be legally obliged to publish how much they pay their workers.


Esther Lynch is the Deputy General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). She gave us her insight into this pay transparency directive. She says it's "a really important measure because all too often women are working beside colleagues, often for decades, and they presume that they're on the same pay, equal pay. Then you find out, sometimes at retirement, or sometimes because of a news story that the person you thought was doing the same job as you, getting the same pay as you, is actually being paid an awful lot more"


At the end of the day, Esther says what is needed are "better laws around work of equal value".

The EU's Pillar of Social Rights will help with this as it is also calling for Work-life Balance with the right to a fair share of parental leave and more flexible working. This has been adopted into EU law and member states must make it their national law by 2022.

One of the biggest factors holding women back in the workplace is the constant juggle between work and home life. Data shows that Germany has one of the biggest pay gaps in Europe. Despite having a female head of state for the last 15 years, it is lagging behind its European neighbours in gender equality at work when compared to countries with a similar female employment rate.


Women in the German labour market


Nadine Epplen is a lawyer and represents women in the hotel and restaurant industry. The problem, she says, "is that even if employment contracts are issued on a 40-hour week basis, the employer can allocate the hours at any time. Of course, women who have children can't guarantee their availability". In her line of work, she meets women who have been dismissed and demoted because their timetables are not flexible enough.

Nadine Epplen


The pandemic has also exacerbated problems related to the sharing of family tasks. Like Nadine and most of her clients, almost 50% of women in Germany work part-time to take care of their families. This is much more than the European average.

Nadine herself has two children and she would like to work full-time, but that's not possible for her because "the daycare times and school times do not always match" her working hours.


To improve the representation of women in the labour market, Germany, like other European countries, has until 2022 to implement the European directive on work-life balance, which includes better access to parental leave, and more flexibility at work.

Katharina Wrolich


According to economist Katharina Wrolich, there is a need to improve joint income taxes, and access to career opportunities for both parents. She says that Germany is shifting from a single earner family model to a one and a half earner family model. In her professional opinion, "Germany still has to make a lot of effort in order to improve access and quality of childcare, and also in terms of opening hours".

One area where Germany is performing well in terms of equality is in the number of women who are board members of publicly listed companies. Here it has 36% female participation. But for increased parity in this area, the country is also in the process of imposing quotas.

Hiltrud Werner


Hiltrud Werner is the only female board member of Volkswagen. She told us that she personally welcomes the quotas because she believes it will help employers to stop overlooking "people with high qualifications just because of biases".

However, she does think that reaching one's career objectives "doesn't come without a price". She admits that she had to make compromises to get where she is today.

How on track are countries across the EU when it comes to breaking through the glass ceiling?



At the current pace of change, Germany won’t see the pay gap closed until the next century and in France it could take more than 1000 years. Some countries are set for equal pay this decade. Belgium is one of those leading the way.

Esther Lynch told us why she thinks Belgium is doing better than other European countries on this score. She says that Belgium has more workers who are in trade unions. She believes this makes them "confident that when they raise questions, that when they complain that they won't be picked on, victimised and moved out, managed out of the firm as being trouble makers".

Esther Lynch


However, she does tell us of a recent case she came across where two equivalent jobs had a substantial pay difference. This she blamed on the simple fact of gender inequality in the workplace. She tells us that "too much of the pay gap is about the work being done by women, and simply that on its own being seen as justification for lower pay".

The pay transparency initiative will go a long way to help improve the gender pay gap, but European nations still have some way to go. The hope for the future is that women won’t have to make compromises to get to the top.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Explosive Email Shows Sarah Ferguson Begged Forgiveness from Jeffrey Epstein After Taking His Money
Corrupt UK Politician Ed Davey Demands Elon Musk’s Arrest for Supporting Democracy
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
Alibaba Debuts Open-Source Deep Research Agent with Benchmarks Rivaling OpenAI
Marcos Faces Legacy-Defining Crisis as Flood Projects Scandal Sparks Massive Tide of Protests
China’s Micro-Drama Boom Turns Stalled Real Estate Projects into Lavish Film Sets
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
'Company Got 5,189 H-1B Visas, Then Laid Off 16,000 Americans': US Defends New $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee
Golf legend tells Omar she should be 'sent back to Somalia' after her Kirk comments
EU Set to Bar Big Tech from New Financial Data Access Scheme
China Bans Livestreaming and AI in Religion Amid Crackdown on Shaolin Temple Scandal
Documents Reveal Mandelson Failed to Declare Epstein-Funded Flights as MP in 2003
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Harris Memoir Sparks Backlash from Democrats for Blunt Critiques in ‘107 Days’
Germany Weighs Excluding France from Key European Fighter Jet Programme
Cyberattack Disrupts Check-in and Boarding Systems at Major European Airports
Japan’s ‘Death-Tainted’ Homes Gain Appeal as Prices Soar in Tokyo
Massive Attack Withdraws from Spotify Over Daniel Ek’s €600M Defence-AI Investment
Björn Borg Breaks Silence: Memoir Reveals Addiction, Shame and Cancer Battle
When Extremism Hijacks Idealism: How the Baader-Meinhof Gang Emerged and Fell
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
Trump Orders Third Lethal Strike on Drug-Trafficking Vessel as U.S. Expands Maritime Counter-Narcotics Operations
Trump Orders $100,000 Fee on H-1B Visas and Launches ‘Gold Card’ Immigration Pathway
Why Google Search Is Fading and AI Is Taking Its Place
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Federal Judge Dismisses Trump’s Fifteen-Billion-Dollar Suit Against New York Times, Orders Refile
France’s Looming Budget Crisis and Political Fracture Raise Fears of Becoming Europe’s “Sick Man”
Three Russian MiG-31 Jets Breach Estonian Airspace in ‘Unprecedentedly Brazen’ NATO Incident
DeepSeek Claims R1 Model Trained for only $294,000, Sparking Global Debate Over China’s AI Capabilities
SoftBank Vision Fund to Cut Nearly Twenty Percent of Staff in Bold AI Strategy Shift
Intel’s Next-Gen Manufacturing Gets a Lifeline from Nvidia’s Strategic $5B Deal
Erika Kirk Elected CEO of Turning Point USA After Husband Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
Massive Strikes in France Pressure Macron and New PM on Austerity Proposals
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Hillary Clinton’s Reckless Rhetoric Fuels Division After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
NASDAQ Rises to Record as Intel Soars More Than 20%, Nvidia Gains 3%
Nvidia’s $5 Billion Bet on Intel Reshapes AI Hardware Landscape
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Trump’s Quip on Biden and Google Lawsuit Revives Debate Over Antitrust Legacy
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
×