European women earn 16.3% less than men on their paychecks. The European Union (EU) says so in a report. This rate is equivalent to saying that women work 59 days without being paid. In other words, if we withdraw these 59 days of pay, it is as if women had been working for free since Monday, November 2 and that men continued to be paid normally until the end of the year. “Monday November 2 marks the day of the year when women in the European Union stop being paid, while men continue to earn money until December 31,” say Frans Timmermans, Mariane Thyssen and Vera Jourov. These three European commissioners have chosen this comparison to symbolize the persistence of wage inequalities between the sexes.
“Equality between men and women is a fundamental value of the European Union, but today reminds us that it is not a fundamental reality”, recall the European Commissioners in a press release.
59 days of unpaid work means that 1 euro earned for a man is equal to 84 cents for a woman, for the same job.
The European Union underlines these injustices and brushes aside the received ideas commonly evoked to justify these differences in salary treatment. For example, men are not better qualified: today 60% of European university graduates are women.
Another stereotype: if women earn less, it is because they are moving towards jobs that are much less paid. An assertion that is still false, points out the EU, which recalls that wage differences remain in similar professions, at equivalent levels of study, regardless of the economic sector and profession.
A normal difference, according to men?
What do men think of these wage inequalities? That wouldn’t worry men too much. It’s rather the opposite which could upset them even depress them, that is to say the fact that women earn more than them, according to a Belgian study of the University of Ghentpublished in 2014. “In two-income households, the fact that the woman works full time can cause more restlessness and poorer mental health in her partner, and even more so if she receives a higher salary. higher than him”, indicated then Piete Bracke, professor of sociology at the University of Ghent and author of this study.
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