The gender pay gap has been reduced by just 200 euros since 2008
Women earn 6,200 euros less than men per year
BarcelonaThe real inequality in the salaries of men and women has only been reduced by 200 euros since 2008, according to reports published by UGT and CCOO of Catalonia this Friday, which mark the wage gap at 19.51% for the first of the unions and 24.2% for the second. The data used are from 2022, from the Salary Structure Survey of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), and state that men earn 6,200 euros more than women per year, a figure that has been reduced since 2014, but has remained above 6,000 euros. Currently, the Catalan difference is higher than the Spanish one by 1,200 euros.
UGT has described the increase in the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) as "essentially important", since there are more women than men who earn it, especially in the field of domestic workers and hospitality. Ivette Barrachina, the union's secretary for Equality and LGBTIQA+, has mentioned that part-time and temporary contracts "have a woman's face" because in Catalonia 18.9 percent of women work with this type of contract, while for men the figure is reduced to 7.1 percent. Barrachina has added that the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours could encourage more women to work full-time for a matter of conciliation.
CCOO has explained that salary supplements have a lot to do with the salary gap, since the difference in the base salary of men and women is 15.6%, but with salary supplements this figure increases by 48.4% and by 137% with respect to overtime. Mentxu Gutiérrez, secretary of Women and LGBTI Policies, has stated that "women do not work at night and do not do overtime because they are not available due to the issue of care."
Up to 25 years to achieve equality
The studies also highlight that the wage gap has increased among women due to their professional training, while the difference has decreased among men. Some analyses suggest that this wage gap could disappear in 20 or 25 years if equality plans, salary controls, reductions in working hours or increases in the minimum wage in Catalan agreements to 1,400 euros are established.
