1. About the report

In the Nordic countries, statistics are published annually on the size of the gender pay gap – the difference between men’s and women’s pay. This pay gap is partly due to the fact that men and women are paid differently for similar work, but a more significant explanation is that men and women work in different occupations with different levels of pay. According to the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive 2023/970, it should be possible to compare pay levels between different jobs if they are equal, i.e. have equal levels of requirements. The UN’s 2030 Agenda has the sub-goal of eliminating the gender pay gap for work of equal value. Although the Nordic countries have long had legislation on equal pay for work of equal value, such comparisons have rarely been carried out and have not led to a reduction in the pay gap. However, as the Pay Transparency Directive is binding, the issue has been raised.

To help reduce the pay gaps that still exist between women and men in the Nordic countries, the Nordic Council of Ministers initiated a project on equal pay for work of equal value in the Nordic region. The project was carried out by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ co-operation body Nordic Information on Gender (NIKK), based at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, and has resulted in this publication, among others. The report was written by Minna Salminen-Karlsson and Anna Fogelberg Eriksson, Sweden. Salminen-Karlsson is an associate professor of sociology, affiliated with the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, and Fogelberg Eriksson is a senior associate professor of education at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University.

The report presents a pilot study that investigated how available official statistics can be used to analyse pay differences between women and men in work of equal value at the national level in the Nordic countries. In particular, statistics from Finland, Norway and Sweden were analysed. The pilot study examined how statistics can be applied in the case of occupations that have already been assessed as being of equal value, i.e. as if the occupations were equal. The report was originally written in Swedish and subsequently translated into English.

This publication is the second in a series of reports from the project on equal pay for work of equal value in the Nordic countries. The first report, authored by Eberhard Stüber, describes legislation and policy initiatives in the Nordic countries, including a discussion of the implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive with a focus on the theme of work of equal value. The third and final report discusses various explanations for the undervaluation of women’s work in a gender-segregated labour market based on a survey of social partners and other key actors in the Nordic countries.

Special thanks go to the members of the project reference group: Byrial Rastad Bjørst, PhD, lawyer at The Danish Association of Professional Technicians (DK); Kevät Nousiainen, Professor Emerita, PhD, at the University of Turku (FI); Þorgerður Jennýjardóttir Einarsdottír, Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Iceland (IS); and Mari Teigen, Professor and Research Director of CORE – Centre for Research on Gender Equality at the Institute for Social Research (NO).

Thanks also go to Eberhard Stüber, Maria Forthun Hoen, Liza Reisel and Paula Koskinen-Sandberg who provided valuable input and information for the pilot study.

Overview

The report begins with a summary.
The report then presents a review of previous research on gender pay gaps in relation to gender-segregated labour markets, the valuation of work dominated by women, work of equal value, and the Nordic model on pay formation and the gender pay gap.
This is followed by a section examining how national statistics on gender and pay have been used and reported by government actors.
The next section examines occupational classifications in the Nordic countries, a key starting point for comparisons of pay across different occupations at the national level.
This is followed by a description of pay measures used and the significance of the choice between mean and median as statistical measures.
This is followed by a section addressing the availability of statistics in this area from national statistics offices and some shortcomings identified in these statistics.
Subsequent sections in the report then explore a variety of aspects in the national statistics:
- pairwise comparisons of pay levels across a number of sample occupations with similar requirements;
- trends over time;
- descriptions and comparisons of pay levels for occupations in different sectors (private-public) of the labour market;
- pay and gender in relation to full-time and part-time work, age, immigrant background; and

The report concludes with recommendations from the pilot study.
A methodological description of the pilot study can be found in the appendix.