Anti‐discrimination law over pay: Italian and European solutions in comparison *. WP CSDLE “Massimo D’Antona”.INT – 107/2014

Villa, Ester (2014) Anti‐discrimination law over pay: Italian and European solutions in comparison *. WP CSDLE “Massimo D’Antona”.INT – 107/2014. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

In this work the main focus will be on factors which marginalise the application of anti-discrimination law over pay. First I will place attention on the lack of transparency on the wage structure and on the wages’ amount, that prevents from verifying whether there is any discrimination. Secondly, the necessity to attribute differences in pay conditions to a “single source” – and the restricted interpretation of this notion given by the European Court of Justice – makes it difficult to apply the anti-discrimination law over pay in cases of contracting-out. Finally we will consider the difficulties of choosing the male employee (“the comparator”) whose wage will be compared to that of female employee in sectors with high horizontal segregation. What are the answers given by the Italian legislation and by European Union to these cases? Considering these weaknesses, the pay gap between men and women is still a problem also in Italy that, according to the European statistical data, is one of the most virtuous Country in Europe in this field. In fact the pay gap between men and women is in Italy attested only at 5.8% (Eurostat 2012). This statistical index does not take into consideration data regarding female employment in the Country: in this sense, the gender pay gap is lower in Countries – such as Italy and Malta – that are featured by a low percentage of employed women (Smith, 2010). If we take into account that in Italy female employment rate is around 47.1% (Istat, 2013), the above mentioned statistical remark is not totally satisfactory: if the wage of involuntarily unemployed women was zero, the gender pay gap would have significantly been higher in countries like Italy (Villa, 2010; Gottardi, 2011; Foffano and Pace, 2011).

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