The progressive women’s movements side-side and PES Women are proclaiming November 4 as European Unequal Pay Day. After all, on an annual basis female workers in Europe still earn 16 percent less than men, so that from 4 November they work for free and for free. Moreover, women are over-represented in the essential professions, but they also appear to be the lowest paid. In fact, child carers earn the least of all Belgians.
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An Unequal Pay Day is being held in our country for the first time. On that day, this year on 4 November, many women start to work for free, as it were, due to the pay gap between men and women. This is 16 percent in Europe, and even 24 percent in Belgium.
Unequal Pay Day is the equivalent of Equal Pay Day, in the spring. That is the day when women earned what men had already earned at the end of the previous year.
Initiators side side, the progressive women’s movement, and PES Women, the women’s organization of the European social democrats, advocate the right to full-time work for women, point out that children are a shared responsibility for men and women and want quotas for more women in management positions. . In addition, they ask to enforce the application of the Pay Gap Act of 22 April 2012.
The message of Unequal Pay Day is clear: many family and family tasks can be perfectly carried out by men, yet they often end up on the shoulders of women and that needs to change, because women bear the consequences for the rest of their career.
Coronacrisis
The Covid-19 pandemic further exacerbated this gender unequal distribution when parental leave was introduced. Of the average number of users over this period, 69 percent were women (18,141) and 31 percent were men (7,987). The largest group of users was between 30 and 45 years old, and therefore has young children.
In addition, there are also many women for whom working from home is simply not an option. Statbel published figures on the wages of a number of essential professions that have kept the country afloat during the first wave. Women are overrepresented in these professions, just think of the personnel in health care, supermarkets and food shops, day care centers, cleaning … Moreover, it appears that health care workers earn almost 30 percent less than the wages of the average Belgian.
At the very bottom of the wage ladder, the caretakers in daycare centers and crèches (here 98% is female). They earn 2,317 euros gross per month, on the condition that they work full-time, which is often not the case.
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