The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted on 17 March 2021 a declaration on equal pay and equal opportunities for women and men, underlining activities Council member states should undertake to manage inequality in employment, North Macedonia’s Ministry of Labor and Social Policy said in a press release on Thursday.
Equality between women and men is among the fundamental human rights which all Council of Europe member states have undertaken to respect. It is inscribed into the most fundamental legal instruments adopted by the Organization, including the European Social Charter.
“Sixty years after the adoption of the European Social Charter – the Social Constitution of Europe – that proclaimed the right of men and women workers to equal pay for work of equal value, closing the pay gap is an objective that cannot be delayed,” said Karin Lukas, President of the European Committee of Social Rights on that occasion.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has pointed to the following resources with a view to tackling pay and opportunities inequalities in employment: recognising the right to equal pay between women and men for work of equal value in law; ensuring access to effective remedies for victims of pay discrimination; promoting pay transparency, inter alia through relevant statistics, allowing for pay comparisons; maintaining effective equality bodies and relevant institutions in order to ensure equal pay in practice; adopting, when appropriate, a comprehensive strategy to promote the rights to equal pay for work of equal value and gender equality in employment, including concrete milestones and a detailed timeline, notably through the design of effective policies and measures and the collection of reliable and standardized sex-disaggregated data.
These elements have been emphasized by the European Committee of Social Rights in its decisions, conclusions and statements of interpretation. In the framework of the Charter monitoring procedures, the Committee has found that progress is being made, but also established many instances of non-conformity with these requirements on a variety of grounds.
In 2020, the European Committee of Social Rights made public fifteen decisions on state compliance with the right to equal pay and equal opportunities in the workplace in the countries that have accepted the collective complaints procedure and developed criteria that can assist member States in their efforts to address inequality revealed by the pay gap and by equal opportunity shortfalls for women in employment.
The Council of Europe’s Gender Equality Strategy 2018-2023 has set priorities for promoting gender equality and equal opportunities, which are implemented via international coordination, cooperation projects and introduction of gender mainstreaming in all areas covered by the organization.
“As a member of the Council of Europe with its own representative from the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy in the Committee for Gender Equality, North Macedonia takes part in creation of initiatives and promotion of crucial conventions, declarations and resolution in the area of gender equality and equal opportunities. Equal pay for equal work or work of equal value is a condition for social justice and for effective participation in decision-making and democracy,” read the Labor Ministry’s press release.
