‘Salary comparisons could reduce gender discrimination’ – Equality Commission

Employers should allow their employees to discuss and compare their pay packets, a manager at the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality said.

“Prohibiting them from doing so goes fully against the principles of transparency and equal pay,” Maria  Borg Flletti told a conference on the gender pay gap. “If you don’t know what your colleague is earning, you can’t know if you are being discriminated against.”

However, this suggestion was shot down by Abigail Psaila Mamo, the chief executive of the General Retailers and Traders Union. She argued that allowing workers to compare their pay packets will render jobs less flexible and more standardized, and that senior employees might find it hard to comprehend that new employees are earning higher salaries than them.

She called on women to take the initiative to empower themselves in the workplace.

“We are victims sometimes, but we don’t need to act like victims all the time,” Psaila Mamo said. “We can either just complain or we can fight for our equality rights.”  

During her speech, Borg Filletti also said that companies should design clear pay structures to ensure that their female employees aren’t being discriminated.

“Paying employees based on their level of responsibilities within a company will reduce wage discrepancies between male and female employees,” she said.

She also suggested that employers should document all their pay decisions, ensure gender-neutral job evaluation, and use gender to compare their current pay and benefits structure.

She also warned that many people do not consider the gender wage gap to be an issue at all and that awareness raising is therefore a crucial first step.

She added that the NCPE’s initiative to award ‘equality marks’ to companies that put gender equality into practice has proven to be successful.

“57 companies have been awarded the equality mark so far, and they had actually asked the NCPE to audit them for gender equality themselves,” Borg Filletti said. “In a country like Malta that has so many gender issues, it is quite a big deal for or a company to stand up and say that they want to be recognized as one that puts gender equality into practice, over and above what the law requires,” she said.  

Lorraine Spiteri, chairperson of the Malta Confederation of Women’s Organisations, criticised the media for reinforcing gender stereotypes.

“Women look at themselves the way society expects them to, expectations they can observe through the media,” Spiteri said. “This could, for example, impact the way they negotiate their contracts during job interviews. Unfortunately, research shows that men tend to negotiate more while women tend to accept more, contributing to the gender pay gap.”