As the end of the year approaches, our attention is drawn to a sobering figure: women in the Netherlands will essentially work for free until next year.
While the end of the year is sometimes associated with making more money — Christmas bonuses and the thirteenth month pay — Dutch women don’t have that much to look forward to.
The Dutch gender pay gap (yes, it exists)
The Netherlands like to pride itself with being a progressive nation. But the road to gender equality is still long for Dutch women.
The NOS reports that, if women’s and men’s wages were equalised, this would mean women in the Netherlands would work for free until the rest of the year.
In other words, women would need to work an additional 47 days per year to earn the same amount as their male counterparts — and this is only considering wages.
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If we take other benefits into account, such as bonuses and company-provided equipment, the gap increases even further.
This pay gap is biggest in the Dutch business sector and slightly smaller in the government sector.
Just… ask for more!?
The gender pay gap has been a contentious topic with a common way of disputing it being to claim that women simply don’t negotiate their salaries as well as men do.
But research shows that the gap doesn’t persist because of a lack of trying: women are refused twice as often as men when they ask for pay increases and are judged more harshly as a result of asking.
“I felt screwed”, said Liselotte van den Broek when talking about her experience asking for a higher salary to trade union FNV.
FNV has been collecting stories of 42 women to draw attention to the difficulties Dutch women face when it comes to equal pay.
We feel you, Liselotte. Hopefully you get paid in full next year.
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I feel inequality at my work, and I only work in a restaurant. Men that came after me with the same (no) experience are a lot more welcome in more difficult roles than just a runner, such as sales (taking orders and payments), work on bar, etc., and a lot less pushed for being slow, not taking additional tasks, etc. And I feel myself better worker on such (more difficult) positions. Nevertheless, if it’s a man, he’s fine on higher roles and it’s fine for him to do less. I bet, when it comes to negotiations on the positions and salaries, men will get what they want easily, and I will be criticized a lot for things which I do better than the men 🤣 okay, the children left, so only one guy with no experience that came after me left. And now I compare with only him. Before the children left, it was the same with them too.
Only one guy stood, not left