Women executives in Romania are paid 14 percent less than men, and the gender pay gap is similar throughout the Central and Eastern European region, found a recent study issued by Mercer. The highest difference in pay between women and men was recorded in Germany, where female executives make 22 percent less than their males peers. Austria followed with 20 percent. The lowest gap in Western Europe was in Belgium – only 6 percent.

The difference in pay between women and men executives would be even higher if bonuses were included in the calculation.

“Simple discrimination on pay is often the reason behind salary differences, but there are other factors at play here. Women, more than men, tend to move in and out of the workforce often due to childcare responsibilities. Many women have to take part-time work to balance competing family and financial demands. This has a huge impact, not only on the numbers of women in senior positions but also on their earning-power. A woman may be paid less than her male peers because the five years she spent off the corporate ladder represents, in the eyes of her employer, five years less experience,” said Sophie Black, Principal in Mercer’s Executive Remuneration team.

Another cause of the gender pay gap is ‘occupational segregation’, a term used to describe how support, or ‘function’ roles, like human resources and marketing, which tend to be dominated by women and paid less, are often perceived as less business critical than sales or operations, where men dominate.

Women make up around 29 percent of the executive and management workforce across Europe compared to 71 percent of men, according to recent data issued by Mercer.

Mercer analyzed the pay of 264,000 senior management and executives in 5,321 companies, across 41 European countries. Out of the 269 companies and over 15,300 employees analyzed in the UK, the average total cash, comprising base salary and awards, for women was GBP 93,434, which was around GBP 10,000 less than for men.

editor@romania-insider.com