Foreword

The OECD has long promoted gender equality in the workplace and in society at large. Recent OECD reports, such as The Pursuit of Gender Equality: An Uphill Battle (2017); Dare to Share: Germany’s Experience Promoting Equal Partnership in Families (2017); and Part-Time and Partly Equal: Gender and Work in the Netherlands (2019), have shown that countries have, in recent years, implemented smart policies that have helped to close some gender gaps. Women have made tremendous gains in educational attainment and labour force participation, and men are taking a more active role in unpaid caregiving following expansions of paternity and parental leave systems.

Yet major inequalities between women and men remain entrenched. One longstanding inequality in particular motivates this report: the gender wage gap. Women earn only 87 cents to every euro or dollar a man makes, on average, across the OECD. This rate has barely moved in recent decades.

Recognising the importance of pay equity, the OECD co-operated with the Ministry of Employment in the Government of Sweden on this report, Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender Wage Gap.

The report presents the first OECD-wide stocktaking of pay transparency tools to close the gender wage gap. Many of the new and promising measures in this report are being shared internationally for the first time, and the report illustrates the diverse array of approaches that have been adopted across countries.

Employer pay gap reporting, equal pay auditing systems, job classification schemes, and related measures have the potential to shine a bright light on inequalities in pay, incentivise employers to close the gaps they find, and empower employees and their representatives to advocate for equal pay. Early results show that pay gap reporting and equal pay auditing policies often help to narrow the gender wage gap, but that stronger policy commitments – and closer monitoring and research on pay transparency programmes – are essential.

Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender Wage Gap will contribute to the OECD’s 2022 monitoring of countries’ progress with implementing the 2013 OECD Recommendation on Gender Equality in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship as well as final reporting by the Swedish Government-appointed Commission for Gender-Equal Lifetime Earnings scheduled for December 2021. This report will also add to the growing body of work supporting the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC), a multi-stakeholder coalition led by the OECD, the International Labour Organization, and UN Women.