Women should earn 20.9% more just to make their salary equal to that of men. It is obviously a statistical average but the data published today by CC.OO. show that this salary gap does not discriminate by salary levels, business sectors or communities. It is widespread.
Partiality explains more than half of the gap. While 22.6% of salaried women work part-time, only 6.8% of men are in a situation. In many cases, opting for a partial contract is not voluntary, either because the women cannot find a full-time job or because the personal care of the family that they mainly assume makes it impossible for them.
It is surprising that one more year, Catalonia suffers a wage gap greater than the whole of Spain. Although there are still no data for 2021, the figures for 2020 show that Catalan women should earn 24.5% more than men on average to obtain the same remuneration. The secretary of women and LGTBI policies of CC.OO. Catalunya, Mentxu Gutiérrez, has pointed out that the biggest gap in Catalonia may be because salaries are higher in the community and because there is a greater presence of immigrants.
In both territories, the evolution of recent years is decreasing if what happened in 2020 is ruled out when the pandemic and the ERTE model (temporary employment regulation file) affected the statistics. In relation to 2019 (before the pandemic) the gap was reduced by almost two points while in relation to 2020 it increased by more than one and a half points.
In the presentation this Monday of the report "Care without a gap. By doing more, we earn less", the general secretary of CC.OO., Unai Sordo, valued the six-point drop in the gap since 2018 due to the sharp rise in the minimum wage interprofessional (SMI) and the framework agreement of agreements.
The union report indicates that, with data from 2021, the average annual salary of women in Spain was 4,721 euros lower than that of men for, among other reasons. According to CC.OO. calculations, if part-time work had the same incidence between men and women, the wage gap would be reduced by 60%, thus standing at 8.4%.
