BERLIN/WIESBADEN (dpa-AFX) – In Germany, women earned less than men on average last year. The income gap, the so-called gender pay gap, remained unchanged compared to the previous year at 18 percent. That was calculated by the Federal Statistical Office.
According to the Wiesbaden authority on Monday, women received an average of EUR 19.12 gross per hour, EUR 4.08 less than men (EUR 23.20). A year earlier, the difference had been EUR 4.16. In the long term, the wage gap between women and men is shrinking: in 2006, women in Germany earned an average of 23 percent less than men.
The reason for the publication of the figures is Equal Pay Day. The nationwide day of action takes place every year on the day up to which women theoretically work for free given the average wage gap of 18 percent. After all, after March 10th in 2021, it will take place three days earlier in 2022 – and thus for the first time before International Women’s Day on March 8th. “It’s progressing, especially if you look at the last three years,” says Uta Zech, President of the Business and Professional Women Association (BPW) Germany, which organizes the Equal Pay Day. “But of course it’s too slow.”
The corona pandemic had hardly any impact on the wage gap, says Zech – and if it did, then rather not a positive one. “For example, there is the effect that men’s wages have risen less due to short-time work,” she explains. Statistically, this narrows the wage gap. “But it’s not about men earning less – it’s about preschool teachers being paid the same as electrical engineers.”
The majority (71 percent) of the gender pay gap has structural reasons – such as the fact that women are less likely to reach managerial positions. There are positive signals in this regard from the top league of German business: According to current figures from the Allbright Foundation, the proportion of women on the executive boards of Dax (DAX 40) companies has recently risen sharply – from 17.4 percent in September 2021 to 19 .8 percent in early March. In contrast, there was hardly any movement in the MDAX and SDAX.
Since August 2021, there has been a quota for women on the boards of large companies. Since then, at least one female manager has had to sit on the board in listed and jointly co-determined companies with more than 2,000 employees and more than three board members when new appointments are made.
According to a study by the KfW development bank, the hope that this could also encourage women to enter the executive floors of medium-sized companies has so far remained unfulfilled. In the top floors of medium-sized companies, the proportion of women fell again last year after a brief interim high in 2020. According to this, 608,000 of the approximately 3.8 million small and medium-sized companies in Germany were run by women. A year earlier it was 638,000.
A study by the credit agency Schufa, which evaluated 4.5 million companies from its database in February, found at least one manager on the top floor in only 26.4 percent of the companies examined – for example on the board, in management or as the owner. Women would rather be their own boss than, for example, achieve a management position in a GmbH.
“If there are more women in management positions, that will definitely have an impact on the gender pay gap,” says Ute Zech. This is not only because women in management positions earn more. Women would also be more likely to ensure that a corporate culture improves in terms of equality – for example by enabling part-time management and further training or making career breaks for family reasons possible without a loss of salary.
Another structural reason for the gender pay gap is that women work more often than men in poorly paid sectors and occupations and more often in part-time or mini-jobs. “As a society, we simply pay less for typical women’s jobs than men’s jobs,” says Zech.
At this point, politicians have high hopes for the announced increase in the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour. Women in particular benefited from this, said Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) on Sunday in the run-up to Equal Pay Day and Women’s Day.
However, trade unions criticized the planned increase in the earnings limit for mini-jobs: at the same time as the increase in the minimum wage, it is to rise from 450 to 520 euros. In doing so, the government is thwarting its equal rights ambitions, said Rainer Hoffmann, chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). “Instead of pushing back mini-jobs, a highly problematic employment relationship is being expanded.”
At the beginning of March, the Economic and Social Science Institute of the trade union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation in Düsseldorf also criticized the increase in the mini-job ceiling as “the wrong direction”. The concept of the form of employment sets incentives that make it unattractive for many mini-jobbers in the short term to expand employment, it said – with negative effects on old-age security, especially for married women./toh/DP/stw