It’s a long way to … nowhere? Equal Pay Legislation in Germany

Despite the high and persistent Gender Pay Gap in Germany there was no legal framework directly addressing the gender pay gap unless, in 2017, the Law on Pay Structure Transparency (Gesetz zur Förderung der Transparenz von Entgeltstrukturen) – in short: Pay Transparency Act (PTA) – came into force. The PTA aims at “enforcing the commandment of equal pay for women and men with equal work or work of equal value.” (§ 1 PTA). It entitles employees in companies with more than 200 employees with an individual right to wage comparison information, invites private companies with more than 500 employees to analyze their pay structures and obliges a small number of large companies to report on equal opportunities and equal pay measures. The Pay Transparency Act pays insufficient attention to institutional inequalities such as androcentric pay structures that benefit male-dominated occupations and positions and typical male careers. Moreover, the act does not oblige social partners to evaluate occupational classifications and evaluations in collective agreements or commit employers and works councils as well as employer’s associations and trade unions to check the discriminative potential of existing agreements. As the act stands now, it certainly meets EU requirements at a formal level, but still holds individuals responsible for asking for wage comparison information and leaves equal pay a rather voluntary exercise for employers and collective bargaining parties. We will analyze how the law came into force and why – in the end - it is not sufficient to address the gender pay gap adequately.