More and more pay discrimination against women in Switzerland – rts.ch

Women earn on average 16.2% less than their male colleagues. This is what emerges from the analysis of salary data from the Swiss survey on salary structure, carried out by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

This salary gap is tending to decline little by little, since this share reached 18% in 2020 and 19% in 2018.

The unexplained part of the increasing gaps

The average salary of a man in Switzerland is 8,398 francs per month compared to 7,034 francs for a woman. How is this monthly difference of 1,364 francs per month explained, which reaches a total of 16,368 francs at the end of the year?

Objective elements, such as the level of training, seniority in the company or even hierarchical position, partly explain these disparities. But an ever-increasing part of this salary gap cannot be justified by a difference in profile, nor by the characteristics of the position occupied or by the field of activity. This unexplained disappearance of salary then becomes salary discrimination based on sex.

Differences between public and private

Across the private sector, gender pay gaps have decreased over time, to 17.5% on average in 2022, compared to 19.5% in 2020.

For the public sector (Confederation, cantons and municipalities together), the gap has also decreased: i.e. 13.8% on average in 2022, on the other hand, the unexplained part of this gap is higher than in the private sector and borders the 50%.

Big differences depending on the branches

The differences in remuneration for women vary according to the economic branches: for example they earn 7.6% less in the hotel and catering industry, 19.3% less in the machinery industry or even 29.4 % less in financial and insurance activities.

Women active in retail are paid 17.4% less than their male counterparts, but almost 60% of this salary difference cannot be explained by objective elements. In the transport and warehousing sector, more than 89% of the wage gap between the two sexes has no justification.

In the secondary sector, the unexplained part of the gap between salaries is greater. The pharmaceutical industry stands out strongly with nearly 73% mysterious salary difference between men and women.

Note that the higher the hierarchical level occupied within the company, the more the unexplained salary difference is reduced. In 2022, it represented 50.5% of the salary gap among senior executives (55.2% in 2020) and 82.8% for employees without a hierarchical function (81.8% in 2020).

Cécile Denayrouse