Germany Wage Gap Among Worst in EU - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Germany, with a 23% wage gap between men and women, is among the worst wage-gap countries in the EU, European Equal Opportunities Commissioner Vladimir Spidla told the German newspaper Die Welt.

• The average inequality across the EU is 17.4%, he said, with only Austria, the Netherlands, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Estonia doing worse than Germany.

• Just as alarming, or even more, is that there has been no improvement of late. “Our numbers show that the wage gap between men and women in 2008 didn’t change significantly from the year before,” Spidla said.

• Spidla attributed much of the gap to how many German women work only part-time or in low-paying jobs. He urged an “equal pay for equal work” policy in the country and for companies to select more qualified women for leadership positions. He noted that EU women tend to be better educated than men.

• In the latest reported data, the Federal Statistics Office said this summer that women earned an average hourly wage of €14 in 2006, while men earned €18.38.

A Deutsche Welle report on Die Welt’s interview