Désirée Oberli

Introduction

“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”.

(UN Sustainable Development Goal 5)

“Equality within genders means that either man or woman are preferred or disadvantaged. “

(Leser & Tichy, 2013)

Unequal wages for men and women in Switzerland is a well discussed topic with lots of different arguments. In 1971 women in Switzerland were able to vote the first time. In 1981 the principle of equal treatment became part of the constitution.

(humanrights.ch, n.d.)

Today, almost 30 years later, when it comes to wages, we still have differences between  men and women in Switzerland. In average, women earn 19.6% less than men.
There is a big unexplained percentage of why these differences occur.
How largeis this unexplained difference and why is there still such a big difference between men and women?

The unexplained difference between women and men wages could be due to women discrimination.
This would be contradicting to the UN-Development goal number 5 (see above).
This blog gives some deeper information and summarises the most important facts about this topic.

 

Terms and definitions

Whenever women with the same qualifications as men have less possibilities to get the same job, the same further education, the same promotions etc., we call this employment discrimination. If women are paid less for the same work we call this wage discrimination. There is a difference between direct discrimination and indirect discrimination.

(EBG, n.d.)

Direct discrimination occurs, when there is different treatment towards one employee compared to another employee because of “who you are”. Examples would be age, disability, religion or belief, gender etc. In other words: You’re treated less favourably.

(Citizens advice, n.d.)

Indirect discrimination occurs when practices, policies, or rules which apply to everyone, have an adverse effect on some people more compared to others. In other words: A particular disadvantage. Examples are the same as in direct discrimination.

(Citizens advice, n.d.)

In general, EBG (Eidgenössisches Büro für die Gleichstellung von Frau und Mann) writes, that wage discrimination is not intentional. Often, reasons are objective unjustifiably different rating systems for men and women, whereby gender specific stereotypes play a role. EBG also says that wage differences also occur, where wages are not or are barely transparent and where they are individually set. This could be improved by companies frequently checking their rewarding practices and job evaluations, setting off function wages and being more careful about rating systems between women and men.

(EBG, n.d.)

 

Status quo in 2014/2015: A lot of differences in wages between men and women

In a media release of the Federal Bureau for Statistics (BFS: Bundesamt für Statistik) 2014 it is written, that 60% of wage-differences between men and women could be explained by objective factors, the other 40% couldn’t be explained in this way. (BFS)

Examples for such objective factors would be age, number of working years and level of responsibility. Women with a high responsibility earned in average 8’221 CHF gross and men with the same level of responsibility earned 10’553 CHF gross which is a difference of 2’332 CHF, in other words: In 2014 men earned on average 22.1% more then women. Jobs with wages of under 4’500 CHF per month tended to have a higher percentage of women working there, namely 60% of women. Jobs with earnings of 16’000 CHF and more per month had way fewer women employees. In these jobs there were only 15% women and 85% men.

(BFS, 2015)

 

The Federal Bureau for Statistics (BFS: Bundesamt für Statistik) in 2019: Not a lot of changes

In a media release of the BFS from 2019 there are a few differences compared to the media release of 2014.
2 out of 3 fulltime jobs with a gross wage of less then 4’000 CHF per month are occupied by women.
In 2016 the difference between men-wages and women-wages was 19.6%, which is less then in 2014 (21.3%). Still there are the same factors that can explain certain differences, for example the number of working years, or the level of responsibility. But not all of these differences can be explained with these factors. 42.9% of the differences in wages between women and men are unexplained, compared to 2014 (39.1%).
There is still an increasing difference, the higher the executive function is. For example, the differences of wage also depend on the industry. The unexplained part of men earning more than women varies depending on the industry. In financial intermediation (33.3%) the difference is 4 times bigger than in gastronomy (8.3%). The percentage of women working at a place earning more than 16’000 CHF per month increased from 2014 (15%) to 2016 (18%). There also is a difference depending on the size of the company. Smaller companies have a bigger unexplained wage difference than bigger companies.
There is also a difference in age, the older the employee, the smaller the unexplained part of the wage-difference between women and men.

(BFS, 2019)

 

Differences between cantons and decrease of women work value due to “unpaid work”- 20 years ago

These informations are taken from a report of the year 2000, which talks about women and equality of women and men.

In Zurich earnings are the highest out of the whole of Switzerland. The lowest wages are earned in Ticino. The largest wage-differences between women and men are in Ticino and Eastern Switzerland. The lowest differences are earned around the lake of Geneva.
There are differences in mobility between women and men. 10 to 14 percent of passenger traffic is due to children being brought to the kindergarden, school , the doctor and free time activities. Most of these accompanies are done by women. In this context we can talk about a lot of “unpaid work” happening. Women apparently find it easier to find a job in their home village then men. Because of lower earning potential, the opportunity costs of a woman doing “unpaid work” are lower and therefore causing women to not enter the work force.

(Bühler, 2000)

 

Monthly gross wages up to professional status

In 2016 the BFS (Bundesamt für Statistik) published a statistic about the difference of payment between women and men:

(BFS, 2018)

On the x-axis we can see the different job categories and, on the y-axis, the monthly gross wage.
The green bars represent men and the orange bars represet women, whilst the brown bars are the total (average) of women and men in each category.
We can see that there is a big difference between different job categories. The higher the professional status, the larger the difference between wages of men and women.

EBG: Reasons for differences in wages between women and men

The difference in wages is due to structural differences between the curriculum vitae of men and women. Women earn less money, because they have less demanding jobs and positions because their educational average is lower then men’s educational average. Another reason is that there are more women represented in low wage industry sectors then men. According to the Federal Bureau BFS women had a loss of 7.7 billions in 2010. The difference in wages already start in the beginning of career. In men-typical industry sectors the starting wage is 200 CHF per month higher compared to women in typical industry sectors.

(EBG, n.d.)

 

Consequences

As consequences we can see the damage of women and their families over short- and long-terms, because lower wages also have an effect in social assurances and pensions. Therefore, it has consequences for the whole society. The State has to pay more social welfare contributions, while it also looses taxes and social security contributions. The society has a smaller repertoire of professionals, because women aren’t present enough on the labour market. Wage discrimination also causes a competition distortion between companies, which can threaten the social peace.

(EBG, n.d.)

 

Conclusion

The differences between men and women wages in Switzerland are still big. We have compared several sources and discussed the reasons and the unexplained reasons causing wage differences in earnings between men and women.  There is a large percentage which can’t be explained by objective reasons. We definitely need to find out, what these reasons are.
If the reasons are because of discrimination, either direct or indirect, it is imparative we find a way to ramedy this discrimination.
In focus of SDG number 5 this Blog talks about discrimination in context of gender, but actually there are many more groups that can suffer from discrimination. Old people, disabled people or people of different races, just to name a few.
The consequences of these actions focussing on counteracting discrimination might seem small and unimportant. In the long term view we can figure out several problems that occur with women-men-wages differences that concern our whole society. For example social welfare contributions, the State has to carry.
There are more consequences then that, but the main message is, that men-women wage differences affect us all and we all should be interested in a more equal payment system in Switzerland.

 

 

 

References

BFS (n.d.) Löhne. Retrieved from
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/wirtschaftliche-soziale-situation-bevoelkerung/gleichstellung-frau-mann/loehne.html, on 13.03.2020

BFS (2015) Schweizerische Lohnstrukturerhebung 2014. Retrieved from
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/wirtschaftliche-soziale-situation-bevoelkerung/gleichstellung-frau-mann/loehne.assetdetail.39777.html, on 13.03.2020

BFS (2019) Analyse der Lohnunterschiede zwischen Frauen und Männern 2016. Retrieved from
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/arbeit-erwerb/loehne-erwerbseinkommen-arbeitskosten.assetdetail.7206413.html, on 13.03.2020

Bühler, E., Brun, C. & Steinmann, M. (2000). Frauen- und Gleichstellungsatlas. Schweiz: Schwerpunktprogramm ZUKUNFT SCHWEIZ

Citizens advice (n.d.) Direct discrimination. Retrieved from
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/what-are-the-different-types-of-discrimination/direct-discrimination/, on 14.03.2020

Citizens advice (n.d.) Indirect discrimination. Retrieved from
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/what-are-the-different-types-of-discrimination/indirect-discrimination/, on 14.03.2020

EBG (n.d.) Ursachen und Folgen. Retrieved from
https://www.ebg.admin.ch/ebg/de/home/themen/arbeit/lohngleichheit/grundlagen/ursachen-und-folgen.html, on 13.03.2020

EBG (n.d.) Zahlen und Fakten. Retrieved from
https://www.ebg.admin.ch/ebg/de/home/themen/arbeit/lohngleichheit/grundlagen/zahlen-und-fakten.html#, on 13.03.2020

Humanrights.ch (n.d.) Frauenrechte in der Schweiz. Retrieved from
https://www.humanrights.ch/de/menschenrechte-themen/gleichstellung/geschichte/frauenrechte-schweiz/, on 13.03.2020

Leser, A. & Tichy, L. (2013). Frauen und Männer: Gleichberechtigt? Philosophisches Themendossier. Schweiz: Swiss Philosophical Preprint Series #104

Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform (n.d.) Sustainable Development Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Retrieved from
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5, on 13.03.2020