Analysis of the perception about the gender pay gap in the EU Member States

Abstract

Abstract The main aim of the paper is to investigate European Union people’s perceptions on the gender pay gap, concentrating on the differences between countries and social groups. The focus of our analysis is on the following research questions: a) Are people in countries with fewer low-wage earners more aware of the gender pay gap than the others? Are high educated people and older workers more affected by the gender pay inequalities? Descriptive statistics and logistic regression applied on 28093 observations extracted from EUROBAROMETER 87.4 (2017) confirmed the two hypotheses and brought in addition other interesting and somehow conflicting results. Namely, in some of the countries, people’ perceptions are not supported by statistical data. In Luxembourg and Belgium, for example, even though statistical data demonstrate that the gender pay gap is between the lowest among European Union countries the percentage of those who perceives the inequalities is very high, exceeding 70% in both countries. More than that, in certain countries like Romania, a large number of people considers that gender pay gap is an acceptable phenomenon. Our contribution to the literature is two-fold. First, we have analysed the perceptions on gender pay gap of a large number of respondents and correlated with the reality demonstrated by statistical data. Second, we drew the attention to the fact that closing the ‘gender pay gap’ should be a target of public and private policies especially in high-wage countries, whereas in low-wage countries, the policy makers should focus rather on closing the ‘countries pay gap’, i.e. ensuring that wages are brought closer to the European average, with many economic and social benefits (raising living standards of the citizens, reducing poverty and migration and so on).