Strengthening gender equality measures

The Finnish Equality Act was amended in April 2005 to put more emphasis on equality plans in the workplace. The plans must report, among other things, on how women and men are placed in different tasks and on pay levels. The new law is expected to improve awareness of equality measures in the workplace.

Every workplace with at least 30 employees is obliged to draw up an equality plan, according to the Finnish Equality Act of 1995. The amended Act (April 2005) outlines in more detail what these plans should include. The new law also tightens the regulation, making the obligation on the employer stricter than before.

An equality plan must include:

• an analysis of the situation regarding gender equality in the workplace;

• a breakdown of the placement of women and men in different tasks, and an analysis of men’s and women’s tasks, pay, and pay differentials;

• measures, planned or implemented, to promote equality and equal pay;

• an evaluation of how measures in the existing equality plan have been implemented, and what results they have produced.

If an employer fails to meet the obligation to draw up an equality plan, the Ombudsman for Equality will set a deadline for making the plan, after which the employer may be ordered to do so under penalty of a fine.

Equality measures

The latest Quality of Work Life Survey (2003) asked whether organisations had taken any measures to promote gender equality. This is in the context of the existing pay differential between women and men, in favour of men. In addition, tasks are not divided evenly between the sexes at workplaces, and men do not exercise their right to statutory family leave as much as women do.

The figure shows the results in terms of the existence of equality plans and various measures to promote equality. These results reveal that very little has been done to promote gender equality, according to the observations of employees.

Although the figure illustrates only the existence of equality plans in respect of workplaces with at least 30 employees, the proportion is surprisingly small. Positive answers were given by just 12% of respondents, on average. Some 17% of all employees at workplaces with at least 30 employees did not know whether an equality plan existed, and 8% thought the question did not apply to them. The gender composition of a workplace can be assumed to have an impact on the amount of importance that is attached to an equality plan. Yet, plans to promote equality had been observed at only 14% of workplaces, with over 30 employees, where the staff comprised equal numbers of women and men.

The public sector at state level is clearly doing better than other sectors in this regard. Where one in four (24%) of the central government’s employees report that a plan has been made, this proportion is just 11% in the private and local government sectors. The distribution by occupational group shows that such plans may exist in a larger proportion of workplaces than the 12% mentioned in the previous paragraph. Both women and men in administrative management report more often (31%) than others that such plans exist. However, information about their existence has not reached the ordinary line worker.

Decreasing pay differentials

An interesting aspect in the response to whether measures had been taken to decrease pay differentials between the sexes is that considerably more men (25%) than women (16%) have noted this kind of activity. Large workplaces, with over 200 employees, have done more to reduce this pay gap, according to both sexes. By contrast, when examined by occupational group, the views of women and men on this issue strongly diverge in public sector areas such as teaching, health care and social services and, on the private side, in service work. Men are clearly more often of the opinion that measures have been taken to reduce pay differentials between the sexes.

Encouraging men to take family leave

More men than women (16% compared with 14%) have also observed the encouragement of men to take family leave. In this, too, the central government sector is more proactive, as men think that they are encouraged in this sector (24%), while women working in this sector have not observed it as much (17%). Compared with other employer sectors, these percentages are high: in the private sector, the corresponding proportion for both sexes is 14%. In workplaces where almost all the employees are men, encouragement of men to take family leave is lowest, at 11%. Where workplaces have a more even distribution of both sexes, the percentage is 23%.

Equal division of work

Of all the equality measures that were considered in the survey, observations were most frequent in relation to the promotion of equal division of work between the sexes. Again, men were more perceptive (35%) than women (30%), or perhaps women took a more realistic view of the situation. Men had noted such measures particularly frequently (48%) in the central government sector. According to women in the same sector, there were far fewer measures of this kind (33%). Size of the workplace seems to have a bearing on this issue, at least judging by men’s responses: almost half of men in large workplaces, of over 200 employees, had observed efforts towards an equal division of work between the sexes.