To narrow the gender-based pay gap:
The value of work must be assessed
and compared vis a vis different category jobs

Helsinki (11.07.2006 - Juhani Artto) Generally speaking, we can say that in Finland, no narrowing of the gap between women's and men's pay has taken place in a long time. The average wage and salary for women is still only about 80 per cent of that for men, despite numerous efforts, undertakings and agreements to tackle the gap problem.

"In Finland, the main factor, persistently maintaining the pay gap, is the
job segregation. Jobs, occupied mainly by women, tend to belong to the low-pay category", Marja Erkkilä, the person responsible for the gender equality work at the largest union confederation SAK, explains. The bulk of these jobs are concentrated in the public and private services.

In Finland, the division between "women's jobs" and "men's jobs" is among the most entrenched in Europe.

As long as this job segregation persists, the traditional "equal pay for equal work" principle cannot lead to any significant improvement. Therefore, the trade union movement seeks to realign the principle, but this time with a more rigorous approach. The idea now is make a strict comparison on the value of work between various jobs, and, accordingly, raise the wages and salaries found to be too low. Up until now such comparisons have mainly been made within individual companies.

However, concrete cases already exist, where this kind of comparison
has lead to significant pay rises for individual women who hold down demanding service sector jobs. It explains why the employers' interest in this kind of approach is less than enthusiastic for the traditional studies on how well, in practice, the "equal pay for equal work" principle has been carried out.

According to Erkkilä, the employers' mainstream consensus is confident that more developed job valuations are not needed as job segregation will decrease through natural changes in career planning patterns. Erkkilä finds these claims unfounded. "Primarily, the culture seems to reproduce the prevailing pattern", she says.

However, among the major employers there are some notable exceptions. By way of example, Erkkilä mentions the Swedish-Finnish forest industry group Stora Enso. "Recently, its key persons have recognised that among its experts there are too few women." A larger provision of women will raise the organisation's ability to respond to the company's challenges, they believe.

The pay gap persists also in Sweden

For Finnish gender equality experts and activists, developments in Sweden offer an important source of reference and material. In Sweden, public resources for gender equality work are way ahead compared to Finland but, still, the pay gap between men and women has remained wide.

All this serves to reiterate the reality and seriousness of the obstacles that have to be overcome before women reach anything approximating an equal status in the labour market. And, attitudes which belittle or underestimate women's ability, generally said, only contribute to these obstacles, Erkkilä reminds us.