Brussels, 21/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - Contrary to what all European and national legislation provides for, women still earn less than men. The current wage difference between men and women in the EU varies between 25% and 28%. This difference is mainly explained by structural differences linked to age, training (level of diplomas) and profession. This is the observation Miet Smet (Belgian, Christian-Democrat), rapporteur on "Equal pay for work of equal worth", made when speaking to the press at the seat of the EP (she spoke almost exclusively in Dutch, explaining that "only the Belgian press was invited". "In 10 to 15% of the cases, however, there is no structural justification for the differences in pay, but a question of sexual discrimination", Ms. Smet pointed out, adding that "jobs often exercised by women are less well paid than typically male jobs", and having a go at the social partners "who have never considered this wage difference as a priority". Miet Smet also said that that disparities in wages between men and women were the greatest in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Portugal, and the least in Germany, the Scandinavian countries and Luxembourg.
To combat this discrimination, the Smet Report, adopted by plenary on Thursday: 1) urges the Commission to: - examine to what extent Member states have managed to include into national legislation non-existent systems of assessing jobs and galvanise the social partners for them to include among their priorities the eradication of wage differences between the sexes; present, in the framework of the launch of the European campaign on wage equality in 2002, a proposal on the review and the updating of the 1975 directive on equal pay, notably by granting sufficient attention to the problem of professional classification and providing for the introduction, in the directive, of a certain number of rules and criteria, guaranteeing objective and non-sexist implementation of the system; 2) calls on Member states to encourage employers to draw up annual reports on equality comprising statistics on the proportion of men and women at different levels of employment; 3) engage the social partners to finally put on their agenda the problem of unequal pay between the sexes and ensure the visibility of this inequality and transparency as to the scale of values used in setting pay; 4) urges the Commission and social partners to work out a comprehensive political strategy to tackle the differences in pay between the sexes.