The authors of the study, commissioned by the Swiss Employers’ Association and published on Tuesday, reviewed analyses carried out on 461 Swiss companies that use the government’s equal pay analysis methodology. Of these, 99.3% comply with the equal pay guidelines under the Swiss Gender Equality Act.
In all, 89% of them showed no gender effect and only 3.3% of the pay gaps between men and women remained unexplained. Only three companies had a pay gap of more than 5%, the tolerance threshold set by the government.
For the employers’ organisation, the survey shows that federal government directives are being complied with at both sectoral and regional level. In its view, the figures used by the unions in debates showing unexplained pay differentials are exaggerated.
However, the Swiss Employers’ Association acknowledged that companies should not relax their vigilance. Pay disparities need to be tackled at their root, namely the more frequent interruptions to women’s working lives. And for this to happen, women must be able to benefit from conditions that enable them to work in the same way as men.
The Swiss Trade Union Confederation called the report an attempt at “embellishing” the real situation for women. It called the study as not representative, claiming it portrays “only a small part of reality”, since it covers only 10% of the companies that have carried out an equal pay analysis.
The University of St Gallen compiled 615 equal pay analyses that corresponds to 10% of the companies subject to the government obligation covering around 550,000 employees. For reasons of comparability, the survey focused on 461 companies.
Since 2021, the Gender Equality Act requires companies with more than 100 employees must carry out an equal pay analysis and present it to employees and shareholders by the end of June.
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