Estonia - Closing gender pay gap difficult - July 14, 2010

According to a Eurostat study, Estonia in 2007 had the highest unadjusted gender pay gap in the European Union (30%). Researchers, equality experts and even government officials recently acknowledged the difficulties in closing this gap in Estonia. While equality legislation exists, the difficulty is in implementing it and the challenge facing women who want to pursue an equal pay case. The gender specialist in the Ministry of Social Affairs, Christian Veske, admitted that someone who feels discriminated against should appeal herself. The country’s equality commissioner, Margit Sarv, said that this takes a lot of courage, adding that only seven women have made an official complaint under the legislation in the last five years despite the country’s large pay gap.

English: http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/26555/

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.