The day of equal pay for women and men fell on October 25 this year, meaning that as of this date, the women of Slovakia will effectively work for nothing until the end of the year, according to Viera Bottcher, communications manager of a national project called Prevention and Elimination of Gender Discrimination, run by the Institute for Research on Work and the Family. The situation has improved by three days as compared to last year, but the data doesn't take into account the period of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the situation faced by women.
The difference between the pay of men and women in Slovakia is among the biggest among countries of the European Union. According to the Slovak Statistics Office, the difference in average nominal monthly pay between men and women in 2020 was 17.8 percent, with men getting €1,446 each month, and women €1,191. This means that for each euro earned by a man, a woman earned 81.6 cents. "One negative feature is that the gender pay gap hasn't changed much over the past ten years, only fluctuating between 18-21 percent. In spite of improvements in the qualifications of women and their higher presence in the workforce, the narrowing of the gender pay gap has come to a halt," said analyst and researcher for the field of gender equality of the national project, Andrej Kuruc.
According to the Institute for Research on Work and the Family, it is still the case that differences in pay are biggest among university-educated people in management posts, especially in the business sector. The difference in average monthly nominal incomes between women and men with higher level university education was 27.3 percent in 2019.
When it comes to age, the biggest pay differences between men and women occur in the 35-44 age group (22.3 percent) and the 45-54 age group (20.6 percent). According to the institute, this happens because women may experience career delay and a loss of skills when they return from maternity leave.
Source: TASR
