4. Current legislation on equal pay for equal work and work of equal value

In this chapter is given a description of current legislation in the five Nordic countries that can be linked to the EU’s principle of equal pay, i.e. equal pay for equal work and work of equal value. First, it describes the existence of proactive provisions in which the requirement to conduct a pay survey plays a central role. The purpose of this type of provision is to reveal pay differentials between women and men. These pay differentials should in turn be related to the individual employer’s basis or criteria for setting pay. Pay differentials that cannot be objectively explained are expected to be corrected, without an individual employee having to pursue legal action against their employer.

Such an approach is codified in the Pay Transparency Directive and can be likened to a two-stage process. Article 9.10 can be said to constitute step 1 and the joint pay evaluation under Article 10 step 2.

This is followed by provisions prohibiting pay discrimination. Such prohibitions require that an employee brings a civil case against the person who can be held legally responsible for pay setting. In practice, this means bringing a case against their employer. All Nordic countries have such provisions, which at the same time correspond to Article 4 (prohibition of pay discrimination) and Article 19 (on the burden of proof) of EU Directive 2006/54. Supervisory mechanisms and legal avenues for different types of procedures are described in more detail in Chapter 5, which deals with case law.

A limitation of this report is that it does not address provisions on entitlement to compensation or leave associated with childbirth, parental leave or care of sick children and/or close relatives. From a broader perspective, such provisions are of great importance to shed light on various factors affecting the pay gap between women and men.

Denmark

Proactive provisions – Equal Pay Act §§ 2a and 5a

Denmark has a specific law on equal pay, Lov om lige løn til mænd og kvinder (Act on equal pay for men and women), also known as the Equal Pay Act. The Danish Act contains both prohibitions against pay discrimination and provisions of a preventive nature. Of interest to this report is § 5a on gender-disaggregated pay statistics. The Danish provisions can best be described as a system of mandatory reporting of pay data based on the six-digit DISCO code, with employers receiving statistics back in a processed form. The purpose of the processing is to provide employers with a basis for dialogue with employee representatives on gender pay differentials.

DISCO is the Danish adaptation of the International Standard Classification of Occupation 2008, ISCO-08. This standard was developed by the ILO. The standard forms the basis for international comparisons of pay data.

§ 2a of the Equal Pay Act is an important complement from a transparency perspective. The provision gives the employee the right to pass on information about their own pay to others, i.e. to colleagues or to third parties. This prevents the employer from applying loyalty clauses in employment contracts that could, for example, prohibit employees in a workplace from exchanging information on individual pay. § 5a also gives individual employees the right to obtain information about their own DISCO code registration. §§ 2a and 5a are also linked to a prohibition on retaliation in § 3 of the act.

The individual’s right to transparency in the employer’s processing of personal data is also set out in § 31 of the Personal Data Act; see also Warming and Precht (2017, p. 21 ff.).

Developments in rules on reporting and equal pay statistics

The provision in § 5a on pay reporting was introduced on 1 July 2001. The details of the legal text have been amended on a number of points over the years. In amending the legislation, two issues have been central: firstly, the number of employees required for the law to apply and, secondly, the size of the groups of workers performing work with the same DISCO code to meet the requirements for pay reporting.

Between 2001 and 2008, the requirement was at least 10 employees (for the law to apply) and the minimum group of employees was five persons with the same DISCO code (to meet the reporting requirement). In 2008, the law was changed to apply to employers with at least 35 employees and the comparison group had to consist of at least 10 women and at least 10 men (10/10 requirement) performing work under the same DISCO code. An exemption from the law was introduced for employers in the sectors of agriculture, commercial gardening and horticulture, forestry and fishing. In 2014, the law was amended but never came into force. The minimum requirement was changed to at least 10 full-time employees, with a minimum comparison group of three men and three women with the same DISCO code. The sectoral exemptions for fishing and green industries were removed. In 2016, a decision was made on a ‘reinstatement’, which meant that the 35-employee limit would continue to apply, as well as the requirement of at least 10 women and 10 men classified under the same DISCO code. The aforementioned sectoral exemption was reintroduced. The core of the current provisions has thus been in force since 2008. The penalty for non-compliance is a fine.

Details of the wording of the provision

Employers affected by the provision initially need to decide between two options:

provide kønsopdelt lønstatistik (gender-disaggregated pay statistics) or
draw up a redegørelse om lige løn (declaration on equal pay).

Gender-disaggregated pay statistics

If the gender-disaggregated pay statistics option is chosen, this means that the employers concerned must report certain specified pay data to Danmarks Statistik (Statistics Denmark) directly or via a central employer or industry organisation by 31 December each year. By 1 September of the following year at the latest, feedback is provided by Statistics Denmark or via the central employers’ organisation. Thereafter, it is the employer’s responsibility to present the statistics to the employees. According to Lov om information høring af lønmodtagere (Act on Information Consultation of Employees), the employer is required to seek the views of employee representatives in this context.

In the case that gender-disaggregated pay statistics are provided, there are two further alternative routes. The most common option is for employers to report all data required under § 8 in Lov om Danmarks Statistik (Act on Statistics Denmark) to their own employer organisation. Private employers who are members of Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening (Confederation of Danish Employers, DA) or Finanssektorens Arbejdsgiverforening (Finance Denmark, FA) report their pay statistics to these organisations. The employer organisations in turn forward the statistical data to Statistics Denmark. Feedback is reported in the same way. The central employer organisations are responsible for providing their member companies with the statistics requested. Public employers also have access to statistics that can easily be obtained from the respective trade organisations. Non-organised private employers are referred to the alternative route, which involves direct reporting to and dialogue with Statistics Denmark.

Declaration on equal pay

In the case of a declaration on equal pay, the documentation must include a description of the grounds for setting pay and an action plan aimed at preventing and reducing gender pay differentials. The action plan must cover a period of three years and include a description of how annual follow-ups will be administered. Further details are left to negotiating parties to agree on.

Evaluations of the Act have shown that this option is not very common. It is therefore unusual for employers to enter into agreements with trade unions on how to implement the prevention of gender pay differentials.

Pay reporting requirements under the Act on Statistics Denmark

Under §§ 6 and 8 of the Act on Statistics Denmark, all businesses with at least 10 full-time employees are required to report individual pay statistics on a quarterly basis, including, among other things, each employee’s gender and classification in the 6-digit DISCO code. An exception to this obligation applies to the agriculture and fishing industry. Statistics Denmark thus has access to gender-related pay data covering approximately 85 per cent of the country’s employees.

Larsen, Verne and Højgaard Mikkelsen (2020, p. 22).

The pay data registered under the Statistics Act thus covers considerably more employees than the pay data that must be reported under the Equal Pay Act. Pay data is only one part of the overall reporting requirements to the statistics authority. Unlike the Equal Pay Act, the Act on Statistics Denmark does not require feedback to employees that summarises the gender pay differentials at the organisational level.

The interaction between the Equal Pay Act, the Act on Statistics Denmark and Persondataloven (the Personal Data Act) and an employee’s right to gain insight into matters relating to pay, as well as to have the right to pass on information about their own pay, has been analysed by Institut for Menneskerettigheder (the Danish Institute for Human Rights) in the report Hvad tjender du? Åbenhed om løn på arbeidspladsen (What do you earn? Transparency about pay in the workplace).

Warming and Precht (2017).

The survey showed that less than half of the respondents were aware of their right to access information about their pay. The same applied to the right to pass on information about their pay and thus also to ignore agreements that include confidentiality clauses. Furthermore, the report shows that there are major shortcomings in terms of employees’ transparency on the existence and content of pay criteria and preparation for pay negotiations and information on the outcome of these negotiations.

Prohibition of pay discrimination – Equal Pay Act § 6

The prohibition of pay discrimination is set out in § 6 of the Equal Pay Act. The connection to the concepts of equal work and work of equal value is set out in § 1.2.

Finland

Finland has an Act on Equality between Women and Men (609/1986). The requirement to promote gender equality in a targeted and planned manner applies to all employers (§ 6). More specifically, this requires that employers:

endeavour to ensure that vacancies are applied for by both women and men,
promote gender balance in internal and external recruitment,
promote equal employment conditions, including pay,
facilitate the reconciliation of work and parenthood, and
prevent gender discrimination.

Provisions on pay surveys came into force on 1 January 2015 and have since undergone a number of changes. Currently, employers with at least 30 employees must draw up an equality plan, including a pay survey, every two years. The pay survey must provide information on classification, pay and gender pay differentials for all employees. The law states that the parties can agree on an alternative approach: a pay survey conducted every three years and the other areas of the plan drawn up every year. The gender equality plan must be drawn up in cooperation with representatives appointed by the employees (§ 6a).

The purpose of a pay survey is to determine whether there are unwarranted differentials in pay for equal work and work of equal value. The grounds for pay differentials must be investigated and, if there are no acceptable grounds, the employer is required to take appropriate corrective action (§ 6b).

§ 7 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex and § 8, cl. 3 explicitly states that this prohibition applies to the application of pay conditions.

Iceland

Proactive provisions in Iceland are based on a different regulatory approach to the pay survey provisions in place in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as the parts of the EU Pay Transparency Directive that deal with pay surveys. Instead, the background to the design of the Icelandic provisions can be found in the EU provisions on product safety. This regulatory approach reflects interaction between legislation via democratically elected institutions and standardisation via standardisation bodies in the form of ISO.

ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. The regulatory approach is considered appropriate in areas where safety or environmental requirements need to be progressively adapted to new scientific and technical developments. Adjustments to the details of a standard are generally quicker to implement than changes to legislation. For this reason, relevant laws are usually more general in nature. The law, in turn, refers to the latest version of a particular specified standard, which in turn sets out specific guidance or limit values.

Unlike the Icelandic legislation, which is freely available in English, the ÍST 85 standard is more difficult to access. Against this background, the Icelandic provisions are given slightly more attention than those of other countries.

Legal rules and the ÍST 85:2012 standard in the context of the Icelandic labour market model

The Icelandic rules on certification and equal pay are based on a standard presented in 2012, ÍST 85:2012 Equal wage management system – Requirements and guidance (hereafter abbreviated as ÍST 85). Social partners and collective agreements have played a central role in the development of the standard:

The overall concept has been in preparation since 2008 and was initiated by the social partners the Icelandic Confederation of Labour, ASÍ and SA–business Iceland. Þorsteinn Viglundsson, who was also the Managing Director of SA–Business Iceland from 2013 to 2016, said, ‘the trade unions proposed that we should develop some kind of equal pay mechanism, which quickly developed into the methodology of an international management standard. And that was in development between 2008 and 2012’ (…) Their aim was to create a bottom-up alternative, with a toolkit for companies to use to check whether they were discriminating or whether they had some bias (Interview, SA, 2018). Accordingly, the trade union and the employers’ association signed the collective agreement in February 2008 with a specific mention of the aim to develop a certification system, in one form or another, that both parties could agree on.

Wagner and Skevik Grødem (2018, p. 18). The report provides a detailed description of the background to the development of the standard and amendments to the Equality Act that entered into force on 1 January 2018.

The initial aim was to develop a voluntary methodology through which learning examples, at the company or organisational level, would be the driving force in promoting equal pay. In terms of methodology, the parties chose to establish a link to management and leadership systems in the form of ISO standards that are widely recognised in the business world.

A change occurred on 1 January 2018, when the Gender Equality Act made the standard mandatory for employers with at least 25 employees. The reason for the amendment was to improve the implementation of the principle of equal pay for equal work and work of equal value. Until then, the application of the standard had been extremely limited.

Since then, Iceland has introduced a new gender equality act, the Act on Equal Status and Equal Rights Irrespective of Gender (No. 150/2020). Article 7 of the Gender Equality Act contains a reference to the ÍST 85 standard. In addition, there is a Regulation on the certification of equal pay systems of companies and institutions according to the ÍST 85 Standard – No. 1030 of 13 November 2017. An additional protocol to this regulation also contains Rules on the use of the equal pay symbol. In addition, there are guidelines with Special criteria for certification bodies of the Standard ÍST 85. The Standard ÍST 85 consists of about 50 pages of tables and dense text. These pages provide, among other things, detailed instructions on how a job evaluation or pay analysis should be conducted. The Icelandic Gender Equality Act is supplemented by the 2021 Act on the Administration of Matters Concerning Equality.

The Gender Equality Act and gender equality standard – regulations with different purposes

The purpose of the Icelandic Gender Equality Act is linked to the Icelandic State’s obligations under EEA law (and thus also EU law) and to obligations under international law relating to the concept of human rights. The origins of the prohibition on pay discrimination in the EU were based in competition law and expressed in Article 119 of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The provision was a result of concerns raised by the French State over competitive advantages for countries with low pay for women.

See Byrial Bjørst (2000) p. 91 ff.

Over time, the Court of Justice of the EU has clarified in various judgements that the right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sex is one of the fundamental human rights that the court has to ensure. The court has also emphasised that the economic aim of the prohibition of pay discrimination is secondary to the social aim of the EU community.

See, for example, judgements 149/77 Defrenne cl. 27 and C-279/97 and C-271/97 Deutsche Post AG cls. 56 and 57.

The introduction to ÍST 85 (p. 5) states that the standard is promoted on the grounds that its application is expected to increase the competitiveness and profitability of organisations:

To implement the Equal Wage Standard could enhance its credibility regarding professional human resource management, corporate responsibility and good management practice. (…) Reviewing the jobs of all employees can reveal opportunities for a more efficient division of labour, reduced cost, and as applicable, increased income. The cost that may at first appear to result from a project of this kind could prove small in comparison with more efficient management, more content staff and eventual impact on financial results

Active measures on pay and on other gender equality issues

The provisions on promoting gender equality in the Icelandic Gender Equality Act are very similar to the corresponding provisions in Finland, Norway and Sweden in the sense that they deal with issues of internal and external recruitment, working conditions, preventing sexual harassment and facilitating the reconciliation of work and parenthood (Articles 4 and 12–14). These elements apply to all employers. The concepts of gender equality and equal pay relate to three groups: women, men and “persons whose gender is registered as neutral in Registers Iceland” (Article 6).

Employers with at least 25 employees must draw up a gender equality plan every three years or “mainstream gender equality perspectives into their personnel policy” (Article 5). The law sets two different thresholds for work on pay surveys.

The first option, “equal pay certification” (Article 7), applies to employers with at least 25 employees. It requires that pay surveys and analyses be reviewed and approved every three years by an independent third-party body certified by the Directorate of Equality. Approval means the employer receives equal pay certification. The review body will in turn send a copy of the employer’s documentation to the supervisory authority. The employer then receives a special equal pay symbol from the supervisory authority (Article 9).

For employers with 25–49 employees, there is a simplified option, equal pay confirmation (Article 8). In this case too, documentation must be provided every three years. The documentation is sent directly to the national supervisory authority, the Directorate of Equality, for review. If the documentation is satisfactory, the employer receives a confirmation

The supervisory authority maintains registers of all employers who have submitted approved documentation, as well as registers of employers who have not complied with the documentation requirements every third year. On the basis of these registers, the authority is able to initiate penalty procedures on its own initiative against those who violate the legislation (Articles 9 and 10).

Changes introduced in the new Gender Equality Act from 2020, revised from the 2018 act, require that employers submit documentation every three years, as opposed to every year, and simplify the procedure for employers with 25–49 employees.

Specifics pertaining to ÍST 85 – content and headings

The standard consists of nine pages of text and four annexes. Annex A (4 pages) contains comments on various clauses of the standard. Annex B (12 pages) is a guide for the classification of work, i.e. for the evaluation of the requirements of jobs. It is based on the four basic criteria for work of equal value set out in EU law. Annex C (13 pages) is a set of guidelines for pay analysis. It provides various fictitious examples to show how the analysis should or can be done from a variety of perspectives. Annex D (13 pages) provides a brief summary of the guiding case law from the Icelandic Gender Equality Complaints Committee, the Supreme Court of Iceland and the Court of Justice of the EU. It also briefly presents relevant provisions of Icelandic law as well as provisions of EU and EEA law.

ÍST 85 – some special characteristics

Employers’ pay surveys are audited by an independent third-party body accredited by the state patent office. The organisations that conduct audits to issue equality certificates are commercial companies.

The standard includes a glossary that defines and explains 35 different terms.
The standard emphasises that work on equal pay should be characterised by continuous improvement.
It is a requirement that the pay analysis should not only result in necessary measures, such as skills development or pay adjustments, but that the equal wage system should set measurable targets.
The organisation’s equal wage policy must be publicly available. It must include that the organisation undertakes to comply with all obligations arising from legislation and standards, that the organisation sets measurable goals in its gender equality work and that the organisation undertakes to work to make continuous improvements in relation to its internal gender equality goals. An explicit purpose of this transparency requirement is to create interest and trust in the employer with respect to prospective employees.
However, the publicly available pay policy is not the same as the organisation’s wage formation system, similar to the Swedish lönepolitik (pay policy). This system should be known to employees.
All decisions in an organisation on pay and conditions of employment must be documented, annotated or reasoned and traceable to an external reviewer. In addition to the pay criteria, the transparency requirement applies to the basis on which a job evaluation is conducted. “Documentation (...) shall include (...) all decisions on wages and terms, together with the data on which they are based, including job classification, job descriptions and sources of information on the evaluation of individual jobs or employees or groups of employees, as applicable, as well as changes in the wages of individual employees or groups of employees following audits” (clause 4.4.4.e of ÍST 85). However, this provision does not give individual employees any right of access under Article 6, Section 3 of the Gender Equality Act.
The organisation must have documented job descriptions for all work, which can be used as a basis for comparison if different jobs are similar or of equal value (Annex A, cl. 4.4.4).
The management shall ensure that sufficient resources are available to fulfil the improvements and responsibilities required by the standard.
The organisation is responsible for all necessary training and competence in areas covered by the standard. This applies to employees involved in decision-making on pay.
Documentation shall indicate who in the organisation is responsible for implementing the various commitments listed (responsibility within organisation for achievement of objectives) (…) (Roles, responsibility and authority shall be defined).
As part of the internal control of the equal wage system, the members of the company’s board are assigned specific roles to ensure that the equal wage system fulfils all legal requirements imposed on the employer. In addition to the internal audit requirement, there is a specific section, under the heading ‘Management review’, which includes a requirement for the board to schedule meetings to monitor compliance with the system.

Prohibition of pay discrimination

The prohibition of pay discrimination linked to equal work and work of equal value is contained in Article 18 of the Equality Act.

Norway

The current legislation in Norway in this area is Lov om likestillning og forbud mot diskriminering (Act relating to equality and prohibition of discrimination) also officially known as Likestillings- og diskrimineringsloven (the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act), which entered into force on 1 January 2018. At the same time, Norway introduced initial provisions on pay surveys. The prohibition of discrimination applies in relation to 12 specified grounds of discrimination or combinations of these grounds. Provisions on aktivt likestillingsarbeid (active gender equality work) complement the prohibition on discrimination.

The requirements for affirmative measures concerning employer-employee relations cover, in principle, the same areas as in the other Nordic countries (except Denmark), i.e. also pay surveys. The provisions are divided into sections on the employers’ duties, including aktivitetsplikt (the duty to act; § 26), redegjørelsesplikt (the duty to report; § 26a) and opplysningsplikt om likestillingsarbeid (the duty to disclose information on gender equality work; § 26b).

The duty to act refers to a four-step approach. The first step involves analysing the risks of discrimination and obstacles to equal treatment and conducting surveys of pay relations. The second step requires an analysis of the causes of identified risk factors. Step three involves formulating measures to combat discrimination and promote equal treatment. The fourth step involves evaluating previous measures to address equality problems. This work must be done continuously and in cooperation with employee representatives. The employer must draw up a pay survey every two years relating to the concept of equal work and work of equal value (§ 26.2a). All public and private employers with more than 50 employees are required to keep records. The documentation requirement also applies to private employers with 20 to 50 employees at the request of a local trade union organisation.

The duty to report requires that the documentation called for in § 26 is made available to the public via the annual reports of companies or public organisations. This requirement only applies to private employers with more than 50 employees. The results of pay surveys must be presented in anonymised form. In the case of non-compliance, Diskrimineringsnemnda (the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal) has the ability to issue injunctions in combination with a fine.

See Prop. [Swedish Government Bill] 63 L (2018-2019) p. 9 and Lov om Likestillings- og diskrimineringsombudet og Diskrimineringsnemnda (Act on the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud and the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal).

The duty to disclose arises in relation to employees, trade union representatives and researchers. The right of access to documentation under § 26 is more extensive, as it also requires that information be obtainable at the individual level. In these situations, special provisions on confidentiality arise. Individual job applicants (§ 31) and employees (§ 32) are also entitled to written information on pay levels and criteria for setting pay, both with regard to their own pay and the pay against which they wish to compare.

The provisions of the act pertaining to pay surveys are brief. In addition, the supervisory authority Bufdir (Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs) provides instructions and templates, but these are not of a statutory nature.

Likestillingsredegjørelse, lønnsforskjeller etc. (Equality statement, pay differentials), extract from Bufdir document January 2023.

A prohibition on pay discrimination linked to the concepts of equal work and work of equal value is contained in § 34.

Sweden

Sweden introduced active measures or affirmative rules on pay surveys as early as 1994, inspired at the time by the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in Canada. Initially, annual documentation had to be provided by employers with at least 10 employees. As the pay survey provisions proved difficult to apply, a number of clarifications were made in 2001 to the then Jämställdhetslagen (Gender Equality Act). From 2009, a number of discrimination laws were combined into one law, The Discrimination Act, 2008:567. The Swedish act contains seven grounds for discrimination. At the same time, the requirement for annual documentation was changed to every three years. In addition, the requirements for documentation were changed to only apply to employers with at least 25 employees. In January 2017, the requirement for annual written documentation for employers with at least 10 employees was reintroduced. The purpose of pay surveys is to discover, remedy and prevent unfair gender differentials in pay and other terms of employment between women and men.

The law sets out a methodology for conducting pay surveys. The first step is to analyse provisions and practices on pay and the employment conditions of the employer. The second step is to analyse pay differentials regarding equal work and work of equal value (Chapter 3, § 8). The third step is to analyse existing gender pay gaps. This means that it must be possible to explain the pay structure or the pay of individual employees on the basis of the provisions provided in step one. A separate analysis should be made of work that is equal, for work that is of equal value and for groups of workers performing work that is, or tends to be, dominated by women and a group of workers performing work that is not, or tends not to be, considered to be dominated by women but pays more despite the fact that the requirements of the work are considered to be lower.

The last-mentioned clause refers to the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU in case 157/86 Murphy; see Fransson and Stüber (2021, p. 224).

This third step is summarised in Chapter 3, § 9. Chapter 3, §§ 13 and 14 describe the fourth and final step, which concerns documentation requirements. The written report must include the results of the pay survey and analysis, pay adjustments or other measures that need to be taken and a cost estimate and timetable. Corrective action should be taken as soon as possible and at the latest within three years. The documentation must also include an account and evaluation of the measures planned for the previous year

All steps of the pay survey must be carried out in collaboration with employee representatives (Chapter 3, § 11).

The specified requirement for cooperation to take place at all stages of the work on active measures is only stated in the preparatory work of the act, Prop. 2015/16:135, p. 104.

The annual written documentation must also include an account of how the duty to collaborate has been fulfilled.

The previous Gender Equality Act contained an explicit prohibition on pay discrimination. In the current Discrimination Act, Chapter 2, § 1 contains a general prohibition on discrimination in working life. The preparatory work for the Act shows that this provision includes a ban on pay discrimination related to equal work and work of equal value.

Summarising comments

Denmark is the only Nordic country without provisions on pay surveys. As a result, there is no requirement to analyse pay differentials according to work of equal value. Instead, there are comprehensive provisions on the reporting of gender-related pay statistics and a 6-digit DISCO code. Icelandic regulation differs in that the provisions on pay surveys in the Gender Equality Act refer to a detailed protocol that every employer has to follow, i.e. the ÍST 85 standard. Such a regulatory model is not normally applied in a labour law context. Furthermore, the Icelandic model assigns accredited private operators a special status in terms of monitoring compliance with regulations. The method of entrusting the monitoring of labour law rules to companies operating in a competitive market must also be described as an unusual phenomenon in the Nordic labour law context.

The Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish pay survey provisions are similar in their designs. However, the Finnish and Norwegian rules are somewhat less detailed than the Swedish ones but have the same starting point, i.e. the concept of equal work and work of equal value. In Sweden, for example, there are requirements for cost estimation, time planning and pay adjustments, which must be implemented as soon as possible and within three years at the latest. The Finnish Act specifically states that staff must also be informed about the gender equality plan and any updates made to it. The Norwegian Act states that the results of pay surveys must be made publicly available. Swedish law sets out a slightly different method for making pay comparisons in pay surveys, compared to the Pay Transparency Directive and legislation or recommendations from other Nordic countries. In Sweden, pay levels between female-dominated work and non-female-dominated work must be compared. The directive refers to differentials in pay levels of female and male workers. Sweden is also in a unique position in that provisions on pay surveys were introduced there in 1994.

Proactive or affirmative legislation on equal pay in the Nordic countries

	Denmark	Finland	Iceland	Norway	Sweden
Type of rules	Statistics & DISCO code	Pay surveys	Pay surveys	Pay surveys	Pay surveys
Legislation since	2001	2015	2018	2018	1994
Documentation requirements, frequency	1 year	2 years**	3 years	2 years	1 year
Minimum number of employees for documentation requirements	35	30	25	0/20/50*	10

* At the request of a trade union organisation of a private employer, the lower limit is 20 employees. For public employers, the documentation obligation applies regardless of the number of employees.

** The employer may agree with the trade union organisation on three-year documentation intervals.

4. Current legis­lation on equal pay for equal work and work of equal value