• Last updated:2021-10-18

    The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) announced just before the International Women’s Day that Mar. 2 was the “national Equal Pay Day” this year to promote the public awareness of inequality in pay between men and women and to urge all sectors to work together and continue their efforts to reduce the gender pay gap.

    Acting according to the results of the Employees’ Earnings Survey by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) and the approach adopted by the European Commission to calculate and set the Equal Pay Day in Europe, the CLA had publicly announced Mar. 5 to be the Equal Pay Day in 2012 for the first time with the intention to draw public attention to the pay gap between men and women. The Employees’ Earnings Survey conducted by the DGBAS this year showed that the average pay of women in Taiwan in 2012 was 16.6% less than that of men. Compared to the 17.3% difference in 2011, there was progress and the gap was smaller than in the US, Japan, and South Korea (see Fig. 1 below). According to the calculation based on the number of work days, women had to work 61 more days (the 16.6% difference in2012 x 365 days = 60.6 days) to earn the same amount that men received in 2011. Therefore, the CLA set the Equal Pay Day on Mar. 2 this year.

     In addition, the survey on the Personnel Management and “Gender Equality in Employment in the Workplace in 2012” conducted by the CLA indicated that the adoption of gender considerations in determining employee pay criteria and pay adjustments in business entities had respectively declined from 18.4% and 8.5% in 2007 to 9.6% and 4.6% in 2012 (see Table 1 below). Meanwhile, the ratio of unequal treatment to female employees in pay adjustment had also dropped from 9.5% in 2004 to 4.5% in 2012 (see Table 2 below), showing improvement in both the internal system of business entities and the perception of employees. Apparently, the efforts to promote female employment of women and removal of barriers had begun to show results.

    As Taiwan already passed in 2011 the Implementation Law for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (hereinafter referred to as the CEDAW), the CLA has therefore worked according to the provisions on equality in employment in Article 11 of the CEDAW to push for amendment of related laws and regulations to assure equality in employment for women, eliminate discrimination against women in employment, boost women’s labor force participation, take concrete measures for maternity protection, develop gender-friendly workplace, and prohibit sexual harassment at work. In the future, the CLA will continue the endeavor to ensure gender equality at workplaces as well as reduce the gender gap in the job market.

• Source:Department of General Planning
• Publication Date:2013-03-22
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