Gender wage gap increases to 7.4% in Netherlands

The gender wage gap in the Netherlands - the salary difference between men and women performing the same job with the same education and experience - has increased from 5 percent in 2021 to 7.4 percent this year. Men appear to have benefited more from wage increases and a good bargaining position in the tight labor market over the past two years, the Volkskrant reports based on the biennial salary survey by Intermediair and Nyeronde.

The increasing gap is due to men’s salaries increasing more than women’s. Seventy percent of Netherlands residents received a wage increase in the past two years. On average, men now earn 16.4 percent more than in 2021, while women saw their wages rise by an average of 9.1 percent. The researchers corrected these figures for factors like part-time work, position, age, and work experience.

Highly educated men received the highest salary increase by far, at 18 percent on average. That is 4 percent more than highly educated women. Practically educated men received a 15 percent pay hike - double what women with the same education level received.

Jaap van Muijen of Nyenrode Business University cannot say for sure why the differences have increased. “But one possible explanation is that men have been nagging louder for a pay increase over the past two years than women,” he told the newspaper. Men are also overrepresented in commercial sectors, while women work in nonprofit sectors more often. Previous research by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) showed that wages are lower in sectors where many women work.

Men also get more extras than women. “Men seem to care more about the harsh secondary employment conditions while women care more about the substantive aspects of the work,” Van Muijen said. Men are three times as likely to have a company car or a fuel card and are twice as likely to receive profit sharing and compensation for relocating.

The wage gap also means that women are financially more vulnerable than men. While 87 percent of men earn enough to cover all their monthly expenses, the same is true for 82 percent of women. According to Van Muijen, blaming women for not bargaining hard enough is too easy. “Let employers demonstrate that they pay equally.

There are also major differences in education level. Almost a quarter of practically trained workers can’t make ends meet, compared to the 13 percent average for all employees. And nearly a quarter of practically trained workers have no savings, compared to 5 percent of theoretically educated workers.