Pay Transparency in Progress

The gender pay gap is persistent and only slowly closing. Full-time working women in the OECD still earn on average 90 cents to every dollar earned by men. Pay transparency tools can help promote pay equity, by providing clear gender-relevant information on pay for stakeholders to address remaining inequalities. Almost 40% of OECD countries now require private-sector employers to conduct gender-neutral job evaluations, while others recommend or are introducing such practices. Pay gap reporting is set to become the norm: by end-2026, it is expected that 84% of OECD countries will mandate private-sector pay gap reporting, up from 55% today - with much expansion in pay transparency approaches driven by the EU Pay Transparency Directive. This third OECD stocktaking on pay transparency provides an overview of gender-neutral job evaluation and classification, pay gap reporting and pay auditing, and pre-employment salary transparency, offering guidance for governments leveraging pay transparency tools to accelerate progress towards equal pay. Gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems are central to operationalising equal pay for work of equal value, enabling comparison of jobs based on objective criteria and the establishment of objective pay structures.