Malta gender pay gap stands at 10.6%, EU data reveals

The gender pay gap in Malta currently stands at 10.6%, which is 6.1% lower than the average gender pay gap in EU member states.

According to the European Commission, factors that contribute to the gender pay gap are related to family-life responsibilities, but are also based on gender selection and segregation.

The issue remains the male dominance over management and supervisory positions. “Within each sector men are more often promoted than women, and paid better as a consequence. This trend culminates at the very top, where amongst CEOs less than 4% are women.”

Segregation in education and in the labour market has also led to women being overrepresented in some occupations and sectors, while in others men are overrepresented. In some countries, occupations predominantly carried out by women, such as teaching or sales, offer lower wages than occupations predominantly carried out by men, even when the same level of experience and education is needed.

The Commission said that while pay discrimination is illegal, it continues to contribute to the gender pay gap. Additionally, women take charge of important unpaid tasks, such as household work and caring for children or relatives on a far larger scale than men do.

“Working men spend on average 9 hours per week on unpaid care and household activities, while working women spend 26 hours – that’s almost 4 hours every day.”

It said that in the labour market, this is reflected by the fact that more than 1 in 3 women reduce their paid hours to part-time, while only 1 in 10 men do the same. Furthermore, the Commission found that women tend to spend periods off the labour market more often than men.

“These career interruptions not only influence hourly pay, but also impact future earnings and pensions,” it said.

The same data also shows that the gender overall earnings gap in Malta stands at 46.8%, when compared to 39.8% in the EU.

Marking European Equal Pay Day, which represents the day in the year when women across Europe stop being paid due to the gender pay gap, EC vice-president Frans Timmermans, Commissioner Marianne Thyssen and Commissioner Věra Jourová said in a joint statement that it is unsustainable and unacceptable that European employers still send out the message that women are worth two pay cheques less than men each year.

The Commission found that since the average hourly wage for women in Europe is 16.7 % lower than it is for men, they effectively work 16% of the year for free.

“Men and women in the European Union are equal – that is one of our fundamental values. But on our labour market, even in the year of 2016, this is not yet a reality,” they said.

The glass-ceiling still exists: although more women have a university degree than men, less than 5% of company leaders in the EU are women. This is a waste of female talent … At the current pace the gender pay gap is declining so slowly that it will be 2086 before women are paid as much as men.”

Timmermans, Thyssen and Jourová said that the Commission is committed to work hard to close the gender pay gap, and has consulted social partners and the wider public on how we should better tackle the challenge of work-life balance.