According to the “Gender Pay Gap-E” project, the difference in base pay stood, in 2019, the last year with available statistical data, at 14.1%, while this discrepancy increases to 17, 2% if the base salary plus regular bonuses and allowances for overtime is taken into account.

“This result is not unrelated to the progressive increase in the national minimum wage, since this is mainly earned by women”, the report says.

The level of education of employed women is higher than that of employed men, but women are over-represented in branches of economic activity and in less valued and paid professions, while the situation is the opposite in top management positions.

If this “horizontal sexual segregation” were eliminated, the pay differential would be reduced by 35%, concludes the study coordinated by ISEG, in partnership with the Center for Mathematics Applied to Economic Decision Forecasting and the Center for Studies for Social Intervention, prepared to estimating the social and economic benefits of equal pay for women and men.

When the earnings of men and women with similar attributes in terms of human capital, factors such as age, education or seniority are evaluated, the differential is higher than when these elements are not calculated, especially in the case of full-time workers.

The study underlines that the over-education of women in relation to employed men contributes to the reduction of this gap by almost 20%.

“If the employment of women and men were evenly distributed by branches of economic activity, professions and qualification levels, the pay differential would decrease by 42%”, the document emphasizes.