Equal pay for male and female workers for work of equal value

On average, women in the EU earn more than 16% less than men who do equivalent jobs. This gender pay gap varies from one Member State to another, ranging from just over 4% to almost 28%.

Despite the large body of adopted EU legislation designed to eliminate this major discrepancy between women's and men's pay, progress is only being made very slowly, and in some Member States the pay gap is even growing wider.

Together with nine other members of Parliament across all political parties, Green MEP Franziska Brantner chose International Women's Day in 2010 as an occasion to hand a letter and a proposal for a Resolution to European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek. This resulted in the Plenary adopting the final Resolution in May 2012.

The Greens believe that the gender pay gap is one of the most blatant indicators of continuing inequality between women and men.

We are therefore demanding that the current legislation be revised with a view to significantly reducing it, amongst other things by providing for sanctions in the event of non-compliance.

We want the Commission to intervene when Member States fail to close the gender pay gap.

We also urge the Commission and Member States to continue their ongoing efforts to raise awareness of the gender pay gap.

The Greens succeeded in having all our key demands and recommendations adopted in the final text.

Thus, Parliament is continuing to demand that the Commission verify the potential of collective redress and step up its awareness-raising campaigns about the burden-of-proof rule in favour of female employees.

Thanks to the initiative of Green MEP Franziska Brantner, the gender pay gap was chosen as the theme of International Women's Day 2011.