The Same Salaries for Women and Men

The same salaries for men and women – that is how the draft law reads. Release of the draft legislation increases the pressure on German companies to introduce orderly job evaluation systems and reassess existing systems. In the future, public and private companies with more than 200 employees will be required to disclose the salaries of female and male employees who perform the same or equivalent functions.

Companies will also be required to disclose evaluation criteria and standards for jobs determined to involve comparable activities. These criteria must be gender-neutral. In other words: to meet the requirements of the law, companies must either adopt a gender-neutral performance evaluation, if they do not already have one, or review their existing performance evaluation system to assess whether it complies with requirements for gender-neutral evaluation. Kienbaum has reviewed the almost 100-page draft law, and the white paper indicates in detail what companies will need to prepare for.