The implementation of equal pay surveys in Sweden: Gender Accommodation

As the covid pandemic struck Sweden in 2020 the decrease in the gender pay gap observed yearly since 2007 came to a halt, resulting in a pay gap of 9.9 percent as of 2022. This chapter examines the implementation of the Swedish legislation regarding equal pay survey, which has been in place since 1994 and amended on a few occasions, most recently in 2017, requiring employers to discover, remedy and prevent unfair gender differences in pay by carrying out annual pay surveys. Although research on the ways in which equal pay surveys contribute to reducing pay inequalities is scarce, extant studies show that many employers fail to comply with the rules. Based on the GEPP model, this chapter sheds further light on this implementation gap, concluding that the implementation of pay surveys has contributing to eliminating gender hierarchies in a limited way only. One reason for this is the strong norm in Sweden, that wage formation is outside of political regulation – except for the Discrimination Act’s regulation of annual pay surveys – and is the responsibility of the social partners, in line with the so-called Swedish model. The chapter argues that the outcome of Sweden’s policy on equal pay in terms of gender equality is accommodation, in the sense that it has targeted accommodating or compensating traditional gender relations instead of transforming them. Unequal effects of traditional gender norms, expectation, and patterns of behaviour in relation to equal pay have not been broken down.