Finland launches wide-ranging programme to reduce gender gap in wages

In the middle of May an equal pay programme was published in Finland, seeking to reduce the wage disparity between women and men by at least five percentage points by the year 2015. The programme includes measures focusing on remuneration systems and on wage and collective bargaining policies in general, redressing the gender imbalance in industries dominated by men or women, career development of women, temporary work, gender equality planning, harmonising work and family life, improving the compilation of statistics and enhancing the social responsibility of businesses and organisations.

The present Finnish government was already committed to preparing an equal pay programme. This governing coalition of the Centre Party, Social Democratic Party and Swedish People's Party is also otherwise committed to gender equality issues, as a reform of the Act on Equality Between Women and Men completed earlier this year includes a provision requiring all businesses with 30 employees or more to prepare a gender equality plan.

The new programme was prepared by a committee including representatives of both sides of industry and the government. Its implementation will be monitored by a working group of similar composition appointed by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.

According to Marja Erkkilä, the Gender Equality Secretary at the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions &#;8211 SAK, the equal pay programme has good prospects of success:

"The equal pay programme is the outcome of a political initiative, and the active involvement of the government in preparing and monitoring the programme will add a great deal of weight to this work." She adds that the programme also gains strength from the fact that it was unanimously approved by all three interest groups involved in the preparatory stages.

Improved comparisons between work of equal value

The motivation for the new equal pay programme lies in the fact that wage differentials between women and men have remained largely unchanged for several years in Finland. Over the last twenty years the earnings of women have been approximately 80 per cent of those of men.

Women's earnings as a percentage of men's earnings
(average basic earnings of employees by sector)

Year     Total    Private  Central  Local                  sector   governm. governm.1985     79       76       80       831990     80       77       83       831991     81       78       83       851992     81       78       83       861993     81       79       84       851994     81       79       82       851995     82       81       81       851996     82       82       80       851997     82       82       81       851998     82       82       81       851999     82       82       81       852000     82       83       81       852001     82       83       81       842002     82       83       81       84

The primary objective of the programme is to work towards the equal pay required by the European Union and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), meaning equal pay for work of equal value performed for the same employer. This goal was already defined in the reform of the Act on Equality Between Women and Men that was approved earlier in the spring. The requirements of the revised Act now include preparing a review of the job classification, pay and pay differentials of women and men.

The equal pay programme will include efforts to improve pay and job evaluation systems enabling more effective comparison of job requirements between collective bargaining sectors. Marja Erkkilä explains that this will clearly facilitate pay comparisons:

"The employers have been unwilling to compare wage differentials between men and women working under different collective agreements. It is important to be aware of these differences, however, as in practice men and women working for the same employer are often covered by different collective agreements. In local government, for example, most employees providing social and health care or cleaning services are women, and their pay is governed by a different collective agreement than the pay of men, who in turn form the great majority of employees in technical positions."

Quantitative objectives and deadlines to the fore

Marja Erkkilä also expresses satisfaction at the concrete character of the new equal pay programme. The programme contains more than 30 action proposals and a large number of quantitative objectives and deadlines. Its general objective is to reduce the wage disparity between women and men by at least five percentage points by the year 2015. Other quantitative objectives or specific deadlines include:

• one-fifth of employees will work in gender-balanced occupations (40-59 per cent ratio of women to men) by the year 2012
• three-quarters of all employees will be covered by a modern, equitable remuneration scheme that provides incentive by the year 2015
• 50 per cent of executive and managerial staff will be women by the year 2020

Marja Erkkilä believes that the revised Act on Equality between Women and Men and the new equal pay programme together constitute the most important reform for many years seeking to reduce male-female wage differentials in Finland. Implementing the new Act and the programme will call for several years of work.

"Direct implementation at workplaces will be the most important thing in successfully carrying through these reforms," Marja Erkkilä stresses.