Pay transparency legislation across OECD countries would benefit from increased transparency – both in instructions to employers, and in communication from employers to stakeholders. Government rules are rarely communicated directly to employers, and employer awareness of pay gap reporting rules is not usually measured. At the same time, the communication of pay gap results from firms to stakeholders is not straightforward. Not all relevant actors are automatically informed about the results of pay gap reporting, and transparency to the public is a reality in only about half of countries with pay reporting requirements.
Reporting Gender Pay Gaps in OECD Countries
5. Communicating gender pay gap reporting rules and results
Abstract
Key findings
Most governments’ communication of pay gap reporting rules to firms is limited. In OECD countries with pay reporting rules, employers are generally expected to familiarise themselves with legal measures. Relevant information is typically available on government websites.
The degree of employer awareness of pay reporting requirements varies considerably across countries, with only five OECD countries explicitly measuring employer awareness of pay reporting rules beyond pay reporting compliance rates.
When it comes to companies sharing pay gap results with stakeholders, most OECD countries’ pay reporting rules provide guidance to employers on how and to whom the results should be reported. Typically, firms must inform workers’ representatives and government bodies about the results of reporting and auditing processes. In some cases, individual employees must also be informed.
Only about half of the OECD countries with pay reporting mechanisms require the results (or a part of the results) to be shared with the general public. In most of these countries, the results must be shared in a way that allows individual employers to be identified. This approach enables public knowledge to be used as a tool for social pressure and, ideally, to promote gender equality. At the same time, this means that in the majority of all OECD countries – including those without pay gap reporting rules – companies’ gender pay gap results are not publicly available.
Policy takeaway: Governments should make more focused efforts to communicate pay gap reporting requirements to employers, as this is foundational to the success of a pay reporting regime. Additionally, employers need greater clarity on how to disseminate pay gap results to pre‑defined stakeholders. Awareness-raising campaigns should also be conducted to ensure that stakeholders such as workers and the public are aware of and responsive to companies’ gender pay gap results.
Employers, employees, and the general public are often unaware of gender pay gap reporting rules. This issue is often cited in reviews of national pay transparency programmes (OECD, 2021[1]). This lack of awareness likely hampers the effectiveness of pay reporting rules since employers may not fully understand their obligations to comply with the rules. Simultaneously, employees and their representatives may not have high expectations for employer engagement in reducing the gender wage gap.
Yet despite these concerns, governments rarely directly communicate pay reporting rules to employers. Instead, employers are expected to familiarise themselves with legal measures. There is also very little systematic measurement of employer awareness, making it challenging to assess the extent to which (poor) communication affects the effectiveness of pay reporting (see Section 5.1.2).
Accountability regarding pay gap results matters, too. Pay gap reporting rules may not have their intended effect of enabling transparency and follow-up action in support of pay equity if they lack clear guidance about who should have access to the results. Rules are more likely to have impact if they explicitly require employers to inform specific actors, including employees, their representatives, and governmental bodies, about the results of pay reporting. Ideally, employers should be accountable up and down (see Section 5.2). When multiple stakeholders are informed about pay reporting results, there should be a higher level of accountability (Cowper-Coles et al., 2021[2]).
Transparency and accountability go hand in hand (see Section 5.3): employers should understand their obligations, stakeholders should know what to expect from employers, and the communication of pay gap results should be clear and accessible to employees, their representatives, and perhaps even to the public.
For proactive businesses, a primary advantage of transparency towards employees is the potential to build trust. When employees are aware of the pay scale this may help them feel valued by their employers. This creates a positive work environment and likely promotes employee retention. On the flip side, there is also the potential for negative impacts on morale among employees who feel that their pay is inadequate compared to others (Cullen, 2023[3]).
Public media and academic scrutiny can also affectively motivate firms to address pay discrepancies. Public recognition matters both to existing employees and new talent – particularly women, who are more likely to choose and apply to companies with a reputation for fair pay (Duchini, Simion and Turrell, 2020[4]).
5.1. How are reporting requirements communicated to employers?
5.1.1. Employers are usually expected to familiarise themselves with legal measures, with information provided online
Employers are often expected to familiarise themselves with relevant pay transparency rules (see Table 5.1). Only a few countries, such as Australia, Canada, and France, directly email employers to provide them with online resources and remind them of their reporting obligations. Austria, Chile and Japan produce information leaflets and brochures on pay reporting rules and individual companies can.
In most countries reporting rules are simply communicated publicly through designated government and/or ministry websites. Such websites can be found in at least Austria, Belgium Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.1 Countries with the lowest degree of outreach do not specifically communicate pay reporting requirements to relevant employers or present them online in layman’s terms, but rather use standard processes for communication of legislation or regulations, such as press releases, legal bulletins, or government gazettes.
In Austria, Belgium and Finland, workers’ and their representatives have helped to communicate pay reporting requirements to the employers. In Austria, workers’ representatives, together with the Federal Ministry for Education and Women, published a brochure in order to support companies in the reporting process. In Belgium, the employee representatives who sit on the participation bodies are trained on the competences of the body and the obligations of the employer.
5.1.2. Employer awareness of reporting requirements is rarely measured outside of compliance (with reporting) estimates
It is challenging to estimate employers’ knowledge of reporting requirements. Some countries consider employers’ compliance with reporting rules as an indicator of their awareness. However, compliance encompasses various factors, including awareness of reporting rules, ability to report, and willingness to report.
Compliance is also imprecisely measured by governments that may not have full information on which companies should report, according to defined inclusion criteria like firm size.2
Despite acknowledging that employers are often unaware of gender pay gap reporting and auditing requirements (OECD, 2021[1]), most countries do not systematically survey or measure employers’ awareness of the rules. Responses to the 2022 OECD Gender Pay Transparency Questionnaire revealed considerable variation in government estimates of employer awareness, ranging from “not very aware” to “very aware”.3
For example, studies conducted on a small number of Swedish employer and employee organisations suggest incomplete awareness of reporting rules, despite Sweden having one of the longest-running pay reporting programmes in the OECD. Many Swedish employers were unaware of the changes in the Equal Opportunities Act, including equal pay audits, according to the Swedish Equality Ombudsman survey from 2017.4 The survey also highlighted differences in knowledge between small and large companies, with employers large enough to have a human resources department or HR function having greater knowledge of the legislation (Swedish National Audit Office, 2019[5]).
However, both Swedish employer and employee organisations faced challenges in assessing the extent of compliance with various aspects of the legislation. Most employer organisations indicated an inability to assess compliance, while employee organisations provided varied responses. This lack of comprehensive understanding impeded efforts to evaluate employers’ adherence to legal requirements (Swedish National Audit Office, 2019[5]).
A survey conducted by the Finnish Social and Health Ministry5 in 2020 identified several potential reasons for incomplete reporting in Finland. The study, based on a representative sample of Finnish employers, revealed that only 53% of employers had conducted an equal pay audit (this represents an increase from the last survey), a third (35%) had not conducted it, and 12% could not say whether or not they had done it. Information from Finland highlights discrepancies between private and public sector employers: 86% of public sector employers, compared to just 50% private sector employers, report having conducted an equal pay audit (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, 2020[6]).
Interestingly, the gender composition of a firm correlates with compliance. Under half (48%) of organisations with a male majority had fulfilled their equal pay auditing requirements, while nearly six in ten (59%) organisations with a female majority had conducted an audit in Finland. Many private sector employers (61%) indicated that pay analysis was not necessary, but this was less common in organisations with female majority (51%) than in those with a male majority (65%). Employers also pointed to the frequency and quality of wage surveys as a barrier to full compliance. Importantly, only a small minority (4%) of private sector employers reported lack of information as a barrier (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, 2020[6]).
In Iceland and Switzerland estimates are moderate and suggest that employers are aware of reporting rules. Initial indications in Switzerland are that the law is being well implemented by employers, although reliable statements on this will only be possible with the evaluation in 2025. In Iceland, based on regular surveys on employers’ attitude and awareness of the Equal Pay Standard, it is suggested that they are becoming more and more aware.
Government estimates in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom portray a positive and optimistic outlook regarding employer awareness. In Canada, the Employment Equity Program is regularly evaluated, and a survey conducted as part of the 2019 evaluation found that 96% of employers had a moderate to very high level of understanding of their employment equity obligations, including reporting rules, with 73% of employers claiming a high to very high level of understanding. In Australia, awareness is measured by proxy through reporting rates. For the most recently completed reporting period, the non-compliance rate was approximately 7%. In the United Kingdom, there was 100% compliance in the first two years of reporting.
Despite the limitations, using non-compliance rates as a proxy for awareness is an inexpensive and non-labour-intensive approach to gathering more information on employers understanding of their reporting requirements. However, many countries do not collect information on reporting rates either – part of a broader pattern of weak enforcement of reporting rules (see Chapter 6).
Table 5.1. Communication of reporting requirements to employers and their awareness of the rules
Information regarding the communication of reporting requirements and private sector employer awareness of rules, 2022.
Country |
How are reporting rules communicated? |
Is employer awareness measured, and how? |
What is the level of employer awareness? |
---|---|---|---|
Austria |
The reporting rules are laid down in the Equal Treatment Act. Employers’ and workers’ representatives provide information as well. In 2014, the Federal Ministry for Education and Women, together with the workers’ representatives published a brochure in order to support companies in the reporting process. |
No. |
Not applicable. |
Australia |
Relevant employers receive email communications from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency regarding reporting. This directs them to a suite of information about reporting that is available on the Agency reporting portal (where individuals can access the Reporting Guide, available at https://www.wgea.gov.au/reporting-guide, https://client-portal.wgea.gov.au/s/topiccatalog, which has extensive articles related to reporting). |
Awareness is measured by proxy through reporting rates. |
Very aware. For the most recently completed reporting period, the non-compliance rate was approximately 7%. |
Belgium |
There is an explanation of the obligations concerning the wage gap on the website of the FPS Employment (https://emploi.belgique.be/fr/themes/egalite-et-non-discrimination/egalite-femmes-hommes-lecart-salarial#toc_heading_4). In addition, the employee representatives who sit on the participation bodies are trained on the competences of the body and the obligations of the employer. |
No. |
Not applicable. |
Canada |
EEA: The Minister of Labour has the responsibility to support employers in their implementation of employment equity. The Labor Program publishes guidance resources and tools on a government website to assist employers available at www.esdc.gc.ca. It also regularly communicates by email with these employers about their obligations, as well as available resources and tools. In addition, the Labour programme responds to employer inquiries related to reporting and employment equity by phone and email. PEA: The office of the Pay Equity Commissioner communicates with workplace parties directly and makes supporting materials available online at https://www.payequitychrc.ca/en/about-act/what-pay-equity |
EEA: The Labor Program’s employment equity programs are regularly evaluated. The last evaluation was published in 2019.1 This evaluation included an employer survey, which measured, among other things, the employers’ self-reported level of understanding of their employment equity obligations, as well as their ability to fulfil their reporting obligations. PEA: No. |
EEA: Very aware. In the employer survey included in the 2019 evaluation of employment equity programs, it was found that 96% of employers had a moderate to very high level of understanding of their employment equity obligations, with 73% of employers having a high to very high level of understanding. In addition, 69% of employers had minor or no challenges reporting information to the Labor Program. PEA: Not applicable. |
Chile |
In the contents of yearbook that indicates the CMF2. |
No. |
Not applicable. |
Denmark |
Reporting rules are not specifically communicated to employers. All employers/enterprises who fall within the scope of the legislation will receive gender segregated pay statistics from Statistics Denmark (DST) free of charge with information on gender pay gap reporting rules. |
No. |
Not applicable. |
Finland |
For instance, social partners communicate information to employers. |
Surveys/research is conducted on the matter.3 |
Neither aware nor unaware. 86% of public organisations had done a pay survey, while in the private sector only 50%. In the municipal sector, 66% had done the salary survey. The gender distribution of the personnel was also somewhat important. Almost half of the organisations where at least 60 percent of the staff are men (48%) had done a pay survey. On the other hand, well over half (59%) of organisations with a female majority had been surveyed. All in all, a bit on the fair side (53%) of the organisations reported that they had made a survey, a good third (35%) said that they had not done it, and 12% could not say whether they had done the mapping. |
France |
Information is provided online at https://travail-emploi.gouv.fr/droit-du-travail/egalite-professionnelle-discrimination-et-harcelement/indexegapro and mailing campaigns have been organised to encourage employers to comply with these obligations (before each annual publication of the Index). |
No response |
No response |
Iceland |
Reporting rules are in the law. |
The government has done regular surveys on employers’ attitude and awareness of the Equal Pay Standard. |
Fairly aware. Gradually they are becoming more and more aware. |
Ireland |
No response |
No response |
No response |
Israel |
The EEOC issued guidelines to employers about the reporting obligation that include explanations and sample reports. |
No, but EEOC tries to locate public reports on employers’ websites. |
Fairly aware |
Italy |
Reporting rules are communicated through Social Partners Organisations and National/Regional Equality Bodies. |
No. |
Very aware. |
Japan |
Information is available on the ministry website and distribution of leaflets to individual companies. |
No. |
Not applicable. |
Korea |
The government provides: (1) direct contact number of person in charge in public corporation (2) chatbot-enabled platform to respond employers’ needs in real time (3) booklets on how to report (4) video on the website(aa-net) that details how to report |
No. |
Fairly aware. |
Lithuania |
They are not communicated. |
Yes, through surveys.4 |
No data. |
Norway |
Undertakings are responsible to familiarise themselves with the applicable legal rules in their own area including rules concerning the contents of the annual reports. Furthermore, the tax authorities and the Company Register Centre have also published a newsletter on their websites. The Equality and Discrimination Ombud can, among other things guide and give advice to the business. |
No. |
Not applicable |
Portugal |
Reporting rules results directly from the law, employers have an obligation to know it. |
No. |
Not applicable |
Spain |
BOE and general information administrative services of the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy and the Women Institute of the Ministry of Equality. As stated above, companies might request guidance to the Advisory Service under the Women Institute. |
No. |
Not applicable. |
Sweden |
On the Equality Ombudsman website. |
The Equality Ombudsman has measured employers’ awareness of active measures in the Discrimination Act.5 |
Neither aware nor unaware. The Equality Ombudsman survey in 2017 showed that many employers were unaware of the changes in the Discrimination Act on Active measures. Pay surveys are part of the work on Active measures. It’s difficult to draw conclusions on the awareness of pay surveys as such. |
Switzerland |
This obligation is anchored in Swiss Law and communicated just as any other legal obligations. Additionally, the Federal Office for Justice and the Federal Office for Gender Equality made two FAQs available on their webpages. Furthermore, auditing companies may inform their clients about the legal requirements. |
An evaluation of the law is planned for 2025. It has not yet been determined how this will be measured in concrete terms. |
Fairly aware. Initial indications are that the law is being well implemented by employers. Reliable statements on this will only be possible with the evaluation in 2025. |
United Kingdom |
The required data is specified in the digital guidance and on the reporting service. |
Awareness can be measured by proxy through reporting rates. |
Very aware. There was 100% compliance in the first two years of Gender Pay Gap reporting. Enforcement of reporting was removed in 2020 as a result of the national lockdown and employers have been given an additional 6 months to report in 2021 to allow for the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. |
Notes: Table 5.1 summarises how reporting requirements in countries with such requirements in the public and/or private sectors are communicated to relevant employers, and the extent of employer awareness of the rules.
1. The most recent Canadian evaluation is available at https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/corporate/reports/evaluations/employment-equity-programs.html.
2. The pay reporting law in Chile only applies to businesses under the supervision of the Financial Market Commission [Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (CMF)]. The Financial Market Commission (CMF) is a public service of a technical nature whose main objectives are to ensure the proper functioning, development and stability of the financial market, facilitating the participation of market agents and promoting the care of public faith. Companies analyse their gender equality, taking remuneration into account, in order to comply with CMF rules.
3. The last Finnish survey of employers was conducted in 2020 and results of the survey are available at http://urn.fi/URN: ISBN:978-952-00-6881-3.
4. The template for the Lithuanian surveys available at https://www.vdi.lt/PdfUploads/KL_Lygios_Galimybes_DTS.pdf.
5. The Swedish National Audit Office report based on this survey (“Diskrimineringslagens krav på lönekartläggning – ett trubbigt verktyg för att minska löneskillnader mellan könen”) is available at https://www.riksrevisionen.se/rapporter/granskningsrapporter/2019/diskrimineringslagens-krav-pa-lonekartlaggning--ett-trubbigt-verktyg-for-att-minska-loneskillnader-mellan-konen.html.
Source: OECD Gender Pay Transparency Follow-Up Questionnaire (GPTQ) 2022 (see Annex A).
5.2. Who needs to be informed about the results of pay reporting and auditing?
Employee representatives – such as unions, works councils, or other employee representatives – are commonly designated to receive reports from companies on pay gaps. These representatives then share the outcomes with employees (see Table 5.2). In some cases, employees are also directly informed.
Several countries explicitly require employer reporting to the government in various forms. These countries include Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Australia, Canada, Chile,6 Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, require companies to report to a government agency;
Denmark and Lithuania require a pay gap analysis be carried out by a government body (for more on these novel approaches, see Chapter 7);
Iceland and Switzerland require that pay gap analysis be examined by a government-validated auditor who is subject to government regulation.
Eleven OECD countries report the results of gender pay gap reporting to the public, though the content of this reporting varies (see Section 5.3). In Australia, for example, the public has been able to view select reported data – including gender composition of the workforce, including at seniority levels, and the existence of policies/strategies pertaining to gender equality and equal remuneration. New legislation now requires the Government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency to publish employer gender pay gaps, which will occur for the first time in 2024. This is similar to countries like Lithuania and the United Kingdom where the public can see the company-level gender wage gap for specific firms.
Box 5.1. Country highlight: France
Accountability
At first, the results of the Professional Equality Index (PEI) are collected into the economic, social and environmental database (BDESE), which gathers information on the major economic and social orientations of companies with at least 50 employees. The information contained in the BDESE also constitutes a diagnosis that can be used by the social partners within the framework of the mandatory negotiations on professional equality. In accordance with article L.2312‑18 of the Labour Code, the BDESE must contain the results obtained at the Index.
Employers are responsible for communicating these results to the social and economic committee (CSE) and to the trade union delegates appointed in the company. Beyond the results obtained for each of the indicators (including when some of them cannot be calculated) this communication should include any useful information, in particular on the methodology used to calculate the first indicator.
In the case of action plans, the labour inspectorate in France’s Ministry of Labour, Employment and Inclusion must also be informed.
Transparency
The overall score and the results obtained for each indicator of the Index are published annually, no later than 1 March, in a visible and readable manner on the company’s website when one exists. They can be consulted by the general public and individual employees on the company’s website at least until the publication, the following year, of the result level and the results obtained for the current year. In the absence of a website, they are brought to the attention of employees by any means.
At the same time, the Index scores of companies with more than 250 employees are published by the administration on the website of the Ministry of Labour (https://index-egapro.travail.gouv.fr/consulter-index, see also Figure 5.1).
Table 5.2. Accountability to workers, workers’ representatives and government bodies
Responses to the question “Who needs to be informed about the results of pay reporting?”
Country |
Individual employees |
Works councils or workers’ representatives at company level |
Social partners |
Equality and/or state bodies |
Other |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Austria |
The representatives inform the employees. Where there is none the report is to be published in the company to inform the employees directly. |
1st the central works council should be informed, if it does not exist; 2nd works committee should be informed, if it does not exist either; 3rd works council, and if there is no worker representation; 4th company has to display the report in a room that is accessible to all employees. A secrecy obligation applies except when the report is used for an equal-play claim before a court or equality body. |
N |
N |
N |
Australia |
Yes, All employers are required to provide their gender equality report to their employees. |
Y |
N |
Yes, Workplace Gender Equality Agency |
The passage of legislation in 2023 now requires all employers are required to provide their gender equality report to their shareholders and must also provide their summary report and an industry benchmark report to their Governing Body. |
Belgium |
No, however, the employee representatives can inform the employees that the wage gap analysis has taken place, that a problem has been identified, if any, and that, as a result, an action plan is (or is not) being developed. |
Yes, the pay gap report is an internal company document, which must be discussed with the employee representatives in the works council or the trade union delegation. Employee representatives are obliged to respect the confidential nature of the data provided. |
N |
No, the report must be kept within the company and cannot be communicated (as such) either to the employees, the administration or the public. |
N |
Canada |
EEA: N PEA: Y |
Y |
N |
Yes, EEA: the Minister of Labour PEA: the office of the Pay Equity Commissioner. |
EEA: Published to the general public. PEA: N |
Chile |
N |
N |
N |
Yes, to the CMF. CMF is a public service of a technical nature whose main objectives are to ensure the proper functioning, development and stability of the financial market, facilitating the participation of market agents and promoting the care of public faith. |
N |
Denmark |
Workers through their representatives |
Y |
N |
Yes, Statistics Denmark as part of the Income and Earnings Survey1 |
N |
Finland |
Yes, the results of the audit (and any updates to it) must be actively shared with employees. This information can be shared in different ways, e.g. on the intranet of the workplace, by posting it a noticeboard at a workplace, and/or at staff meetings2 |
Yes, the elected representative, the occupational safety and health representative or other employee‑appointed representatives must be informed and equal pay audits must be done in co‑operation with worker representatives. |
N |
N |
It is up to the employers if they want to publish the information. Some do, for example on their website, but very few. |
France |
Yes, the overall score and the results obtained for each indicator of the Index are published in a visible and readable way on the company’s website where one exists. If there is no website, they are made known to employees by any means. |
Yes, the employer makes results available to the social and economic committee (CSE) via the economic and social database (BDESE). This includes the results obtained for each of the indicators, including when some of them cannot be calculated, the overall score of the Index, accompanying this information with any useful details, particularly on the methodology used. Where the Index latter is not calculable, the company shall explain the reasons for this incalculability. |
N |
Yes, the employer declares its results to the authorities. This includes the results obtained for each of the indicators, including when some of them cannot be calculated, the overall score of the Index, accompanying this information with any useful details, particularly on the methodology used. Where the Index latter is not calculable, the company shall explain the reasons for this incalculability. |
The Index is published to the general public. |
Iceland |
Results of pay analyses built on job classifications shall be introduced to employees and be accessible to them taking into an account privacy policy. |
Y |
N |
Yes, the Directorate of Equality. An independent government-certified auditor will assess the results. |
Some results are published to the general public. In the public sector anyone can ask for information on fixed salary of employees and all total salary of directors. |
Ireland |
No response |
No response |
No response |
No response |
No response |
Israel |
Y |
N |
N |
Yes, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission |
Published to the general public. |
Italy |
Workers can request information. |
Yes, companies’ trade unions must be informed. |
N |
Yes, the Regional Gender Equality Advisor must be informed. |
N |
Japan |
N |
N |
N |
N |
Published to the general public. |
Korea |
N |
N |
N |
N |
Some results are published to the general public. |
Lithuania |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Published to the general public. |
Norway |
Yes, according to the preparatory work in the Activity and reporting duties, employees should have an actual opportunity to compare their salary with the average at their level. Bufdir (The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs) writes that one way of doing this is to send out an email or put up a poster with the results of the salary survey, or information that those who wish can see the average salary at their level. If the salary cannot be anonymised the employer must still provide access but must assess the need for confidentiality. |
Yes, since the mapping should be done in co‑operation with workers’ representatives, they should be aware of the results at the same time as the employer. |
N |
N |
Published to the general public. |
Portugal |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Yes, the Ministry for Labour, Solidarity and Social Security (Labour Inspectorate) and the Commission for Equality in Labour and Employment (CITE) must be informed. |
Some results are published to the general public. |
Spain |
Yes, in companies where there are no Legal Representatives, workers can access directly to the information of the salary registry,3 but they will only be able to access to percentage differences. |
Yes, in companies with a Legal Representation of the Workers, the request must be channelled through the Legal Representatives |
N |
N |
Some results are published to the general public. |
Sweden |
Yes, through employee organisations. |
Yes, the employer is to provide an employee organisation to which the employer is bound by collective agreement with the information required for the organisation to be able to co‑operate on work on active measures. |
Y |
Yes, at the request of the Equality Ombudsman, an employer shall provide information about circumstances in their activities that are of importance for the supervision exercised by the Ombudsman. |
N |
Switzerland |
Yes, the reporting system provides for employees to be informed in writing within one year of the conclusion of the audit (Article 13g of the Swiss Federal Act on Gender Equality). |
N |
Social partners can act as auditors (Article 13f of the Swiss Federal Act on Gender Equality). |
There is no reporting to a government agency but an audit is carried out by a government-qualified inspector. |
N |
United Kingdom |
N |
N |
N |
N |
The general public: The legal requirement is for employers to publish their gender pay gap information on their organisation’s website and on the UK Government website. All reported information is available publicly. |
Note: Table summarises whether or not employers need to be accountable down (i.e. to workers and workers’ representatives), accountable down (i.e. to social partners and government bodies) and/or accountable to other actors (such as the general public) in countries with pay reporting requirements in the public and/or private sectors.
For more information on transparency to the general public, please refer to Table 5.3.
1. The Structure of Earnings survey provides detailed information about the earnings of employees in the labour market disaggregated by level of education, occupation, region, industry, gender and age. The structural statistics on earnings form part of Statistics Denmark’s coherent statistical system for earnings and labour costs. Employees in the public sector, in corporations and in organisations are covered. More information is available at https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/dokumentation/documentationofstatistics/structure-of-earnings.
2. Information obtained from (OECD, 2021[1]).
3. All employers in Spain, regardless of size, are obliged to keep a register with the average values of salaries, salary supplements and non-wage payments of its staff, broken down by sex and distributed by professional groups, professional categories, or jobs of equal or equal value. Employees have the right to access, through the legal representation of workers in the company, to the wage register of their company. These registries are not available to the general public.
Source: OECD Gender Pay Transparency Follow-Up Questionnaire (GPTQ) 2022 (see Annex A)
5.2.1. Accountability down – reporting to workers and their representatives
Pay transparency programmes attempt to promote equal pay by providing information about the existence and size of gender pay gaps. Therefore, it is crucial that the gender pay gap reporting system – and the information coming from pay gap analyses – are transparent to workers and other stakeholders. In short, employers should be accountable to their workers, whether that be workers themselves or their representatives.
Engagement with employee representatives during the review and reporting process is clearly and explicitly regulated in a few countries. In Finland, Norway, and Sweden, pay reporting requirements and equal pay audits must be conducted in co‑operation with employees and their representatives – who are directly informed of the results as they are involved in producing them.
In most countries, employers must explicitly share with worker representatives the results of reporting and/or auditing processes. This is the case in at least Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. The specific requirements vary. For example, in Belgium, discussion with employee representatives in the works council or the trade union delegation is required. In Finland, discussion with an elected representative, the occupational safety and health representative or another employee‑appointed representative is necessary. In Italy, companies’ trade unions must be informed. In Austria, various worker representation bodies should be informed depending on their availability.
Additionally, a majority of these countries also mandate employers to inform employees directly, not only through employee representatives. Individual employees may be informed through communication with employee representatives, directly through a publicly available document (e.g. France7) or through other means. In Switzerland, for example, the Logib reporting system requires employees to be informed in writing within one year of the conclusion of the audit.
Employees are the direct recipients of pay information only when they have no legal representation in their workplace. For instance, in Spanish companies without legal representatives, workers can directly access salary registry8 information, but they are only able to access percentage differences.
In Belgium and Italy there is no explicit requirement to inform employees. However, in Belgium, the employee representatives can inform the employees that the wage gap analysis has taken place, that a problem has been identified, if any, and that, as a result, an action plan is (or is not) being developed.
5.2.2. Accountability up – monitoring by government bodies
Reporting to a designated government agency is another common requirement for pay gap reports (see also information on monitoring in Chapter 6).
The results of private sector pay reporting and/or auditing must be shared with (or the reporting process takes place through) government bodies in a number of countries, including Australia (Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency), Canada (the Minister of Labour) and the office of the Pay Equity Commissioner),9 Chile (Chilean Financial Market Commission), Denmark (Statistics Denmark through the Structure of Earnings Survey10), France (Labour inspectorate in France’s Ministry of Labour, Employment and Inclusion), Iceland (Directorate of Equality), Israel (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), Italy (Italian Regional Gender Equality Advisor), Lithuania (State Labour Inspectorate), Portugal (Portuguese Ministry for Labour, Solidarity and Social Security (Labour Inspectorate and the Commission for Equality in Labour and Employment), and Sweden (Swedish Equality Ombudsman).
Among these, France has one of the most comprehensive information sharing system (Box 5.1). French employers must declare the results of pay reporting to the authorities and make them available to the social and economic committee (CSE) via the economic and social database (BDESE).11 This includes the individual indicator scores – including when some of them cannot be calculated – as well as details on the methodology used. The company is also required to communicate the results obtained for each of the indicators and the overall score of the Index to the administration digitally. If the overall score cannot be calculated, the company must provide an explanation for this.
5.3. Transparency to the public can be a tool for social change
Public knowledge of gender pay information is important as it can help build social pressure to address gender inequality. For instance, the United Kingdom’s “name and shame” approach to salary reporting has helped ensure 100% compliance in his first two years of programme implementation and is credited with stimulating public debate on the gender pay gap (OECD, 2021[1]).
According to Duchini et al. (2020) UK’s pay transparency regulations are also influencing hiring practices; those employers affected tend to adopt practices that are more attractive to women, such as providing information about wages in job advertisement and offering flexible working arrangements. This can have large effects: in a recent survey experiment (Blundell, 2021[7]), in order to not be hired by the (hypothetical) employer with the highest gender pay gap in their industry, a majority of women would accept a 2.5% lower salary. In the experiment women are prepared to accept, on average, 4.9% lower pay to avoid this high pay gap employer (Blundell, 2021[7]).
5.3.1. About half of OECD countries with pay reporting mechanisms require transparency to the public
Approximately half of the countries with pay reporting mechanisms require some form of gender-disaggregated pay statistics to be shared with the general public (see Table 5.3).
All collected information must be shared with the public in the form of a report or action plan in Australia, Canada (under the Employment Equity Act), Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
In the remaining countries only a part of the results must be shared. For instance, in France the overall score of the Professional Equality Index and the results of all the indicators obtained in the Index are public, but not the report detailing the calculations of the Index. In Japan, Korea, and Lithuania, the calculated pay statistics, e.g. gender pay gaps or average pay by gender, that must be published.
When results are shared with the general public, in most cases individual employers can be identified. They are typically required to publish the results on their company websites. This transparency is key to building social pressure, as various stakeholders, including social actors, media, individual employees and shareholders, can compare the gender pay gaps across companies.
In some countries, gender pay gaps are shared publicly at aggregate levels, such that individual employers cannot be identified (Australia and Portugal). For example, the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency prepares and publishes annually gender pay gaps at aggregate level for the entire dataset of employers disaggregated by industry, occupation and manager categories.12 The Portuguese Ministry for Labour, Solidarity and Social Security (Strategy and Planning Office) annually prepares and publishes the aggregate gender pay gaps (adjusted and unadjusted gaps) disaggregated by industry, occupation, educational attainment, seniority, region.
Importantly, for any of these communication measures to have an effect, stakeholders like workers and the public must know to look for results of pay gap reporting. Pay gap reporting regimes should therefore be connected to regular awareness-raising campaigns so that employers, workers, and the public are “on the lookout” for gender pay gaps – and engaged in closing them.
5.3.2. How should pay information be reported?
Very little research has looked at how gender pay gaps can be best communicated to ensure stakeholder understanding. But how gender pay gaps are reported to stakeholders matters, as illustrated by a UK study. Using a randomised control trial, the Behavioural Insights Team commissioned by the UK Government Equalities Office tested five alternative ways13 of communicating the wage gap (United Kingdom Government Equalities Office, 2018[8]). The study revealed that benchmarking information – placing a company’s result in the context of other companies’ results – helps readers differentiate between companies with high gender wage gaps and companies with low ones. When statistics are presented in terms of money, rather than a simple percentage, the ability to understand the gender pay gap is maximised. A likely explanation for this is that people relate to monetary comparisons (e.g. 90 pence to every pound) more easily than percentages. The findings of this study have direct implications for the effectiveness of pay reporting rules.
Table 5.3. Transparency of gender pay gap reporting to the public
Whether and how pay gap reporting results need to be shared with the general public, 2022
Country |
Who |
Where |
How much information is shared? |
Can individual employers be identified? |
---|---|---|---|---|
Australia |
Workplace Gender Equality Agency (prepares and publishes) |
Website of the WGEA: Data Explorer (an interactive public platform) at https://data.wgea.gov.au/home |
Gender pay gaps at aggregate level. This means that the gender pay gap for the entire dataset is published annually, as are gender pay gaps by industry, occupation and manager categories. The data does not include personal or identifiable information of individual employees. |
No, individual organisation gender pay gaps are confidential data. (As of 2024 gender pay gaps of individual employers must be published). |
Canada EEA |
Minister of Labour |
Three government websites – as part of employers’ annual employment equity reports, on the Government of Canada’s open data portal, and a user-friendly, public-facing data visualisation website. The Minister of Labour must also table in Parliament an annual report consolidating and analysing employers’ annual employment equity reports available to the public. |
The whole report is public and it includes pay gap information starting in 2022. |
Yes, the annual employment equity report of employers includes their legal name, their business name, and the address of their principal place of business, and the census metropolitan areas and provinces/territories where employees are located. |
France |
Ministry of Labour and the employers themselves. |
Each year, by 1 March at the latest, companies must publish in a legible and visible manner on their website, if it exists, or failing that, inform all employees by any means. At the same time, the companies’ Index scores are published by the administration on the website of the Ministry of Labour at https://index-egapro.travail.gouv.fr/consulter-index. |
The overall score and the results of all the indicators obtained in the Index are public. |
Y |
Iceland |
The Directorate of Equality |
Published it in an accessible manner on its website. |
Register of companies and institutions that have acquired the Equal Pay Certification. |
Y |
Israel |
Employers |
Company website if there is one, and public places, like a newspaper. |
All required reporting is public |
Y |
Japan |
Employers |
On corporate websites and on the website run by he MHLW including “Database on firms that promote women’s participation and advancement”. Available at https://positive-ryouritsu.mhlw.go.jp/positivedb/ |
Information on the proportion of female average annual remuneration to male average for entire workforce, as well as for regular workers and non-regular workers is required to be shared. |
Y |
Korea |
Ministry of Employment and Labour |
Posted in the Official Gazette or on the website of the Ministry of Employment and Labour for six months. |
Name of the business owner, name and address of the business (For corporations, name of the representative of a corporation, name and address of the corporation); the total number of employees, number of female employees and the ratio thereof, total number of managers, number of female managers and the ratio thereof, and employment standards of female employees of the relevant type of business. |
Yes, note that the businesses that are put on the publicised list include only (a) Businesses whose ratio of employed female workers or managers by job categories is less than 70% of the average by industry and size three times in a row prior to the date of disclosure of the list, and (b) business owners who failed to comply with the request to implement appropriate measures after submitting their performance results. |
Lithuania |
By the employer and the Social Insurance System |
Government website |
Those with at least 8 employees, of which more than 3 are women and more than 3 men, average of calculated income by gender (with social insurance contributions deducted) is shown. |
Yes |
Norway |
Employer |
Annual report or another document available to the general public (the annual report shall specify where the document can be found). |
The statement shall be formulated such that no personal circumstances of individual employees are revealed. The results of the pay review shall be included in the statement in anonymised form. |
Yes |
Portugal |
Strategy and Planning Office from Ministry for Labour, Solidarity and Social Security (GEP/MTSSS) |
The barometer is published on the website http://www.gep.mtsss.gov.pt/trabalho |
Both average and median remuneration are available in the Barometer (for example) and in statistics (namely in Boletim Estatístico from Strategy and Planning Office from Ministry for Labour, Solidarity and Social Security http://www.gep.mtsss.gov.pt/trabalho) by different qualification, occupation, seniority, region, sector of activity, firm dimension and it is possible to cross different characteristics. Individual information is not publicly available. |
It is possible to identify, but this information isn´t publicly available (Data protection law). |
Spain |
Registry is under the competence of the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy or the Autonomous Communities according to the territorial scope of the equality plan. |
Equality plans are registered in a public registry at https://expinterweb.mites.gob.es/regcon/pub/consultaPublicaEstatal |
The whole pay audit. Note that the pay registry is not publicly available. |
Yes |
United Kingdom |
Employers |
On their own website and the government website at www.gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk. Where an audit has been ordered by a tribunal it should be published in line with the Equality Act 2010 (Equal Pay Audits) Regulations 2014, regulation 9. |
The whole report is public. |
Yes |
Note: Table summarises whether or not and, when relevant, how employers need to publish results of pay reporting to the general public in countries with requirements to publish pay reporting results to the general public in the public and/or private sectors.
Source: OECD Gender Pay Transparency Follow-Up Questionnaire (GPTQ) 2022 (see Annex A).
References
[7] Blundell, J. (2021), “Wage responses to gender pay gap reporting requirements”, CEP Discussion Papers DP 1750, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE, https://ideas.repec.org/p/cep/cepdps/dp1750.html (accessed on 26 August 2021).
[2] Cowper-Coles, M. et al. (2021), Bridging the gap? An analysis of gender pay gap reporting in six countries, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/giwl/assets/bridging-the-gap-full-report.pdf.
[3] Cullen, Z. (2023), “Is Pay Transparency Good?”, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper w31060, https://www.nber.org/papers/w31060.
[4] Duchini, E., S. Simion and A. Turrell (2020), “Pay Transparency and Cracks in the Glass Ceiling”, CAGE Online Working Paper Series, p. 482, https://ideas.repec.org/p/cge/wacage/482.html.
[6] Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland (2020), Työpaikkojen tasa-arvosuunnitelmat ja palkkakartoitukset 2020, https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/162520/STM_2020_33_rap.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y.
[1] OECD (2021), Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender Wage Gap, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/eba5b91d-en.
[5] Swedish National Audit Office (2019), The Discrimination Act’s equal pay survey requirement – a blunt instrument for reducing the gender pay gap (RiR 2019:16), https://www.riksrevisionen.se/en/audit-reports/audit-reports/2019/the-discrimination-acts-equal-pay-survey-requirement---a-blunt-instrument-for-reducing-the-gender-pay-gap.html.
[8] United Kingdom Government Equalities Office (2018), “Presenting gender pay gap figures to the public: an online randomised control trial”, GOV.UK, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/716145/Presenting_GPG_figures_to_the_public.pdf.
Notes
← 1. See Chapter 7, on practical tools and guidance, for more information on how these websites look and on other digital tools to facilitate gender pay gap reporting.
← 2. For example, it may be difficult for governments to know exactly which companies are required to report if companies’ inclusion in a pay reporting system depends on the firm’s size at a given point in a year. The government simply might not have this information.
← 3. Reflecting OECD governments’ responses to the OECD GPTQ 2022 question “To what extent are employers in your country aware of reporting requirements? If needed, please specify”, with the following possible responses: “very unaware”, “fairly unaware”, “not unaware nor aware”, “fairly aware”, and “very aware”.
← 4. The Swedish National Audit Office report based on this survey (“Diskrimineringslagens krav på lönekartläggning – ett trubbigt verktyg för att minska löneskillnader mellan könen”) is available at https://www.riksrevisionen.se/rapporter/granskningsrapporter/2019/diskrimineringslagens-krav-pa-lonekartlaggning--ett-trubbigt-verktyg-for-att-minska-loneskillnader-mellan-konen.html.
← 5. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health report based on this survey (“Työpaikkojen tasa‑arvosuunnitelmat ja palkkakartoitukset 2020”) is available at https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/162520.
← 6. For Canada and Chile this refers to segments of the private sector: federally regulated employees in Canada, and certain financial sector workers in Chile.
← 7. On the Egapro website (https://egapro.travail.gouv.fr/consulter-index/) it is possible to consult gender pay gap information for all French companies that need to report. This information includes the overall index score and scores for the individual indicators.
← 8. All employers in Spain, regardless of size, are obliged to keep a register with the average values of salaries, salary supplements and non-wage payments of its staff, broken down by sex and distributed by professional groups, professional categories, or jobs of equal or equal value. Employees have the right to access, through the legal representation of workers in the company, the wage register of their company. These registries are not available to the general public.
← 9. Canada’s pay reporting regulation is two‑fold, pay gap reporting under the Employment Equity Act applies to federally regulated private‑sector employers with 100 or more employees. These employers submit annual reports to the Minister of Labour by 1 June of each year. Conversely, under the Pay Equity Act, federally regulated employers in both the private (10 employees or more) and public sectors (no employee threshold) are required to submit an annual statement on their pay equity plans to the Pay Equity Commissioner.
← 10. The Structure of Earnings survey provides detailed information about the earnings of employees in the labour market disaggregated by level of education, occupation, region, industry, gender and age. The structural statistics on earnings form part of Statistics Denmark’s coherent statistical system for earnings and labour costs. Employees in the public sector, in corporations and in organisations are covered. More information is available at https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/dokumentation/documentationofstatistics/structure-of-earnings.
← 11. Base de données économiques, sociales et environnementales (BDESE), i.e. the economic, social and environmental database, gathers all the information necessary for the consultations and recurrent information that the employer makes available to the worker representatives in the Commitée Sociale et Economique, i.e. the Social and Economic Committee (CSE).
← 12. 2023 legislation now requires the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to also publish employer gender pay gaps. This will begin in 2024, however, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency will also continue to publish these aggregate gender pay gaps.
← 13. The treatment groups were exposed to the following interventions: 1) the gender pay gap (GPG) presented as percentage and visually in a bar chart; 2) identical to 1st but with benchmarking (against other companies) information; 3) identical to 2, but GPG presented in terms of money and visually as coins; 4) GPG presented as percentages in the type of the UK Energy Performance Certificate. The control group only saw the percentage difference GPG.