Every February 22, Equal Pay Day is commemorated in Spain. Multiple actions deployed at the international, European and Spanish levels promote the equalization of working conditions between both sexes. In this post we review the most recent and outstanding ones, focusing on Directive (EU) 2023/970, of May 10, pending transposition.
One of the first important steps on the road to equal pay for men and women was taken in 1951, when the International Labor Organization adopted Convention No. 100 concerning Equal Remuneration for Men and Women for Work of Equal Value.
Since then, among the most recent international initiatives, in 2015 the Member States of the United Nations assumed the commitments of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Among the 17 goals set is, under number 5, the achievement of gender equality. From this impulse comes the International Equal Pay Coalition, whose aim is to achieve pay parity between men and women worldwide. This alliance represents the only multilateral platform specifically focused on combating the gender pay gap at global, regional and national scales.
In Europe, the European Parliament and the Council adopted Directive (EU) 2023/970, of May 10, strengthening the application of the principle of equal pay for men and women for equal work or work of equal value through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms.
This directive introduces substantial obligations for companies, among which the following stand out:
- The right of candidates to know the initial remuneration level or salary band of the vacant positions before the job interview. Employers will not be able to ask applicants about their remuneration history in previous jobs.
- The right of employees to request and obtain information on their individual remuneration level and on the average remuneration levels, disaggregated by sex, of the category of employees who perform the same work or work of equal value.
- The obligation for companies with a workforce of 100 or more people to report on the gender pay gap in their organization. When this gap exceeds 5% and cannot be justified by objective and gender-neutral criteria, a joint remuneration assessment must be carried out with the workers’ representatives.
- The reversal of the burden of proof in legal proceedings, so that it will be up to the employer to prove the absence of pay discrimination when the person provides sufficient evidence.
Member States have until June 7, 2026, to transpose this directive into their national laws.
In this line of promotion of equal pay, which requires effective pay transparency within business organizations, Spanish law already has Royal Decree 902/2020, of October 13, on equal pay between women and men. In it, the principle of remuneration transparency is defined “as that which, applied to the different aspects that determine the remuneration of employees and on its different elements, allows sufficient and significant information to be obtained on the value attributed to said remuneration”. In addition, it assigns it the objective of identifying discrimination that occurs when people who perform work of equal value to others receive lower remuneration without this difference being objectively justified by a legitimate aim and without the means to achieve that aim being adequate and necessary. It also regulates the instruments to apply this principle, consisting of the wage register, the remuneration audit, the job evaluation system and the right to information of employees.
The future transposition of this directive is expected to reinforce and expand these obligations, requiring companies to make an even greater commitment to transparency and accountability in remuneration matters.
