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 Data released by the EU's statistic agency Eurostat ahead of
International Women's Day on Sunday also showed the pay gap between
men and women tended to be wider in Europe's richest economies,
although not definitively so.
Overall, women in the EU were paid 16.4 percent less than men in
2013, a smaller gap than the 17.3 percent in 2008 when the financial
crisis hit.
The data is unadjusted, so looks only at totals rather than, say,
equal pay for equal work. Eurostat gave no explanation for the
improvement, saying only that the gender pay gap "is linked to a
number of legal, social and economic factors which go far beyond the
single issue of equal pay for equal work".
But Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenberg bank, said the
improvement may have to do with women's labor being heavily weighted
toward areas such as education and government, which are hit less by
a downturn.
"Women tend to have more crisis-proof jobs," he said. "Women are
over-represented in the public sector (and) the public sector has
had fewer cuts."
By contrast, areas where men are over-represented, such as
construction and manufacturing, have been hit hard.
Eurostat data provided one pointer for this, noting that 67 percent
of clerical support workers in the EU were women. That compared with
only 33 percent of the managerial work force.
RICH COUNTRIES
Within individual EU countries, the largest pay gap in 2013 was in
Estonia at 29.9 percent and the smallest in Slovenia at 3.2 percent.
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Many of the richest EU countries, meanwhile, were to be found at the
wider end of the pay gap.
Women in economic powerhouse Germany, for example, were paid 21.6
percent less than men, though that is an improvement from 22.8
percent in 2008. The 2013 gap for fellow G7 economies Britain and
France both narrowed and were at 19.7 percent and 15.2 percent,
respectively.
Europe's other G7 economy, Italy, saw its pay gap widen sharply
during the period, to a still relatively narrow 7.3 percent from 4.9
percent.
(Editing by Gareth Jones)
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