Spain is the sixth country in the EU with the lowest hourly gender pay gap, but the rate skyrockets in part-time jobs
Spain is the sixth country in the European Union (EU) with the smallest difference between what women and men earn per hour in full-time jobs. Note, however, the second worst data in part-time jobs. The latest Eurostat figures put the gender pay gap in Spain at 8.7% in 2022 (13% on the EU average), which shoots up to 18.7% in the case of part-time jobs. However, the figures from the European statistical office ignore the structural inequalities of the labor market, which are what make this difference much wider.
“The wage gap is a consequence of many other labor gaps,” the confederal secretary of Women, Equality and Working Conditions of CC OO explains to 20minutos.. According to Vidal, it is “wrong” to calculate the difference in salaries per hour worked, since the data managed by the union reflects that, per year, they earn 18.6% less. “We know that if women worked the same intensity of hours that men work, the gap would decrease to 5%,” she says.
The problem, according to the union representative insists, is that the Spanish gap is based on “structural discriminations”, fueled mainly by the burden of care, which still falls on the shoulders of women. “Let's go with the care backpack to work. And we cannot do it with the same intensity, nor with the same time.. Comparing a woman on the same day, the only thing that shows is that women sometimes earn less because we are in sectors where less is paid.. But what is not included in this comparison are the reductions in working hours, the leaves of absence or the lower salary supplements that they charge,” he explains.
In fact, the difference becomes more acute when looking at the figures for part-time jobs, which are 75% made up of women.. Spain is, only behind Croatia (21.5%), the second EU country with the highest hourly wage gap for part-time work: 18.7%. Here is something that, according to Vidal, must also be taken into account, and that is that nine out of ten part-time workers have that day voluntarily.. That is, they would like to work full time, but they don't because they have to take care of. “We have made it clear to the Government that, although it is true that the wage gap has decreased a lot in the last 15 years, now it is going to begin to decrease much less because it already responds to structural causes, which must be managed with structural proposals,” Add.
No gap before age 25
The Eurostat statistics also provide another piece of information that corroborates the discrimination suffered by workers due to maternity and care.. Among those under 25 years of age, the wage gap plummets, and in Spain it is even negative. That is, they earn more than them (3.8% more). “These are factors that a priori can explain it, the fact that women train more than men and the fact that we know that discrimination against women begins to increase when the first child is born,” Nacho Conde assures this newspaper. , the deputy director of the Foundation for Applied Economics Studies (FEDEA).
“When we are not mothers, we have no responsibilities to care for anyone, and the gap disappears. That is the key to saying that there are structural differences that have to do with care,” highlights Vidal, from CC OO.. According to him, these data can be explained with the active population figures.. From 26 to 49 years old, 87% of men without children have a job or are looking for work, a proportion that shoots up to 91% when they have their first child.. However, the opposite happens in the case of women: when they do not have children, they are 77% active, a percentage that drops to 72% after their first child.