Equal pay and equal treatment at work (Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and Recast Directive 2006/54)

AuthorLídia Hermina Balogh
Pages27-35
27
4 Equal pay and equal treatment at work (Article 157 of the Treaty on the
Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and Recast Direct ive 2006/54)
4.1 General (legal) context
4.1.1 Surveys on the gender pay gap and the difficulties of realising equal pay
According to data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office referring to the first nine
months of 2019, the average gross salary of men working full time was 20 % higher than
that of women: HUF 393 600 for men (cca. EUR 1 150) and HUF 327 700 for women
(cca. EUR 950).132 According to data from Eurostat referring to 2018, the gender pay gap
in Hungary was 11.2 % (while the gender pay gap at the EU level was 14.8 %).133
The authors of an analysis published in 2018 refer to the gender pay gap ranking list of
the World Economic Forum (WEF) from 2016, where Hungary is ranked 130th out of 140
countries. In addition, the authors point to the fact that the gender pay gap is especially
pronounced among the highly educated, and conclude that with the current pace of closing
the gap, equality would not be achieved until 2102 in Hungary.134
According to the preliminary results of research launched in 2019, the sectoral and
educational factors are the most consistent regarding the gender pay gap in Hungary,
while other factors (firm size, age, tenure) also play a role, concluding that high
educational achievement in certain other industries are responsible for the highest gaps,
especially in the cases of middle aged or older women.135
4.1.2 Surveys on the difficulties of realising equal treatment at work
In Hungary, discrimination is apparently not considered as one of the major elements
contributing to the hardships of women: according to the results of a survey (published in
2018), only 9 % of the problems mentioned by the participants to the open-ended question
What are the primary problems that women living in a situation similar to yours are faced
with the most? were related to discrimination (maximum of 5 answers/person, cumulative
number of answers referring to some specific problem of women = 688).136 Discrimination
of women may still be an unspoken issue: in other research from 2018, the participants
of a focus group interview (HR experts) only implicitly referred to the phenomenon of
discrimination in relation to the employment of mothers of young children.137
132 Hungarian Central Statistical Office (Központi Statisztikai Hivatal): ‘Munkaerpiaci folyamatok, 2019. IIII.
negyedév’ (Labour Market Tendencies, I-III. quarter of 2019),
https://www.ksh.hu/docs/hun/xftp/idoszaki/mpf/mpf193/index.html.
133 Eurostat: Gender pay gap statistics, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Gender_pay_gap_statistics.
134 Simonovits, B., Szeitl, B. (2018) Nk és férfiak helyzete – nemzetközi összehasonlításban’ (The situation of
women and men in international comparison), in Kolosi, T., Tóth I. Gy. (eds.) Társadalmi Riport 2018,
Budapest, TÁRKI, p. 182, available at: http://www.tarki.hu/sites/default/files/trip2018/166-
183_simonovits_szeitl_Nok_ferfiak_helyzete.pdf.
135 Takács, O., Vincze, J. (2019): ‘A nemek közti béregyenltlenség Magyarországon: új eredmények egy új
módszerrel (The gender pay gap in Hungary: new results with a new methodology), Discussion papers,
MT-DP 2019/24, Budapest, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies,
http://real.mtak.hu/104619/1/MTDP1924.pdf.
136 Gregor A., Kováts E. (2018), Women's Affairs 2018: Societal Problems and Solution Strategies in Hungary
(Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Budapest), available at: https://library.fes.de/pdf-
files/bueros/budapest/14462.pdf. English summary of a research report in Hungarian: Gregor, A., Kováts E.
(2018) Nügyek 2018: Társadalmi problémák és megoldási stratégiák (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Budapest),
p. 5, available at: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/budapest/14461.pdf.
137 Lipták, K., Matiscsákné Lizák, M. (2018), ‘A kisgyermekes nk foglalkoztatási helyzete és lehetségeik’ (The
employment situation and opportunities of women with young children) Vezetéstudomány Budapest
Management Review, vol. 49, no. 3, p. 47, available at: https://doi.org/10.14267/VEZTUD.2018.03.05.

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