Equality on salaries not supervised as prescribed by law

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Finnish employers do not promote equality exactly as prescribed by law, even though the Act on Equality between Women and Men explicitly states that an employer has to take measures to promote gender equality.
      The amended legislation from 2005 obliges the employers to make an equality plan and a pay survey annually. This obligation applies to workplaces with a regular staff of at least 30 persons.
     
However, only some 60 per cent of all workplaces have drawn up such plans and conducted such surveys. Particularly the private sector employers have tended to overlook these obligations.
      A total of 56 per cent of the workplaces that have conducted a pay survey have found differences in pay between women and men. However, in many cases this observation has not led to any measures.
      These results appear from a study on gender equality planning and pay surveys in Finland in 2008 carried out by the Work Research Centre of the University of Tampere, which was published on February 25th in Helsinki.
     
Minister for Equality Stefan Wallin finds it is positive that the public sector did so well in the survey.
      ”When it comes to credibility, it is important that the public sector sets an example”, Wallin says.
      At a press conference arranged on account of the publication of the survey, some criticism was expressed concerning the supervision of compliance with the Act. Moreover, the exact form of the pay survey has not been clearly defined, some critics charged.
      ”Regrettably often these surveys have not led to any measures at workplaces”, Wallin notes.
     
The Government will submit a report on the effectiveness of the Act on Equality between Women and Men towards the end of 2009.
      Pirkko Mäkinen, the Ombudsman for Equality, says that pay issues are the most common issues among the cases handled by her office, and the number of such cases is surprisingly large.
      Mäkinen would like to see a task group considering the male-female wage gap charged with evaluating whether or not more resources should be allocated to the supervision of the compliance of the Act. She says that positive experiences of such supervision have been reported from Sweden.
     
According to the survey, large workplaces have drawn up gender equality plans more often than small workplaces.
      HR Manager Johanna Saarinen from the Helsinki-based Kone Corporation, a leading manufacturer of elevators and escalators, feels that the obligation to make an equality plan has not been reported sufficiently to companies, nor has it been supervised.
      Personnel Manager Pekka Svanljung from the Finnish retail specialist Kesko has good experiences from equality planning. He says that the planning itself as well as the figures produced for the plan woke the company up to the situation.
      ”This is a slow process, but we have made progress. However, one equality plan alone is not enough to change anything”, Svanljung argues.


Links:
  Ministry of Social Affairs and Health press release 25.2.2009: Equality planning at workplaces is becoming more diversified
  Equality between women and men in Finland

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