Today, women in the Nordics are among the most active labour market participants in the world, but the goal of equal conditions and pay equity in the labour market is far from being achieved. One of the clearest indicators of this are pay differentials between women and men. The Nordic Council of Ministers has therefore commissioned the publication of Pathways to Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value: Regulation, Reporting and Practice in the Nordic Region.

The report is written by the lawyer Eberhard Stüber. He has worked as, among other things, an analyst at the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman (JämO), and as a senior investigator at the Swedish Gender Equality Agency, both in Sweden.

The publication describes legislation and policy initiatives in the Nordic countries, including a discussion about the implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive with focus on the issue of pay equity. The report also provides a brief overview of Nordic labour market models and highlights differences for possibilities to advance work towards equal pay for equal work and work of equal value. Special attention is paid to the interaction between legislation, collective wage agreements and requirements for reporting wage statistics related to the ISCO standard.

This publication is the first in a series of reports from the project on pay equity in the Nordics. The second report in the series examines how available public statistics can be used to measure wage differences between women and men in equivalent work at national level in the Nordic countries, with in-depth study of Finland, Norway, and Denmark. The third report discusses various explanatory approaches regarding the undervaluation of women’s work in a gender-segregated labor market, based on a survey of the labor market partners and other key actors in the Nordic countries. The second and third reports will be published in the winter of 2024/2025.