Closing the Gender Gap

1 January, 2005

Source:

FNV - IMPACT - PSI

This guide was first developed by the Public Services International Women's Education and Organising Project in the Andean Region to provide practical support for its affiliated unions in the Andean countries to progress towards pay equity for women. It sets out in detail a method for designing and then implementing a programme of job evaluation, with the purpose of revaluing, without gender bias, the work effected within an organisation or company.

The wage gap betwing men and women has many different roots, among which are the traditional undervaluing of women's work, the lack of access many women
experience in educational opportunities, vocational training and promotion; sexist attitudes, rooted in society, which restrict the kind of jobs for which women can apply; and disproportionate levels of responsibility for maintaining the home and caring for family members, which is not equally shared with men.

In this guide, trade union activists, both women and men, will find a method for job evaluation which corrects the sexist bias encountered in the most commonly used job evaluation systems. Trade unionists will learn to identify the effects of sexist attitudes which until now have not been studied, and which influence the tools of job evaluation, and all stages of the evaluation process.

Also exists in Spanish and Portuguese