Salary gap 2nd narrowest in EU

19 July 2007

BRUSSELS – The gap between men’s and women’s salaries in Belgium is the second smallest in the EU. Women earn 7 percent less than men in Belgium, on average. In Europe as a whole this difference comes to about 15 percent, according to a new report from the European Commission. Only Malta has a narrower margin.

A recent report from the Belgian Institute for Equality of Women and Men presented a very different figure: women earn 13 percent less than men in Belgium, it said. Which report should we believe?

Neither, says Hildefard Van Hove, a statistician at the Equality Institute, because both reports are based on incomplete figures. The European figure is based only on a survey about 6,000 people at most, she says. While her organisation’s figure is based on more than 100,000.

Even though the European survey underestimates the actual salary gap in Van Hove’s opinion, she does add that the Equality Institute’s figures paint a bleaker picture than is the case. She points out that the institute does not include the public sector in its research, while that is precisely where the salary gap between men and women is smallest.

So 7 percent or 13 percent? Once again the truth is somewhere in between.

Subject: Belgian news