After Luxembourg, Belgium is the European country with the lowest gender pay gap
In 2023, the gender pay gap harmonised at European level, i.e. the difference in hourly wages between women and men in Belgium, amounted to 0.7%. This means that in 2023, women earned on average 0.7% less per hour worked than their male colleagues.
Compared to ten years earlier, the gender pay gap decreased by 6.8 percentage points.
At international level, Belgium performs better than most of the other European countries in terms of pay gap between women and men. Only Luxembourg has a lower pay gap. On average, women in the European Union earn 12.0% less per hour than their male counterparts.
The figures on the gender pay gap published by Statbel are calculated in accordance with Eurostat’s instructions, which allows the results to be compared at international level. More specifically, the following formula is used: the gender pay gap = (men's hourly wage - women's hourly wage) / men's hourly wage.
Eurostat's method results in lower figures for the pay gap than those of other publications. This is because there is no recalculation of working hours for occupations whose contractual working hours differ greatly from the national average. This is particularly the case for teaching staff, for whom only hours spent in the classroom are counted.
Adjusted for working hours, the pay gap would be four percentage points higher in 2022, reaching 4.7%. This is mainly due to two factors influencing the results for education:
- since the working hours are longer than the contractual hours (the hours spent in the classroom), the real hourly wage is lower after adjustment
- a structural effect, especially the significant proportion of women in education.
The gender pay gap represents the difference between the average gross hourly wages of women and men, expressed as a percentage of the average pay for men. It is expressed as follows:
Gender pay gap = (hourly wage for men - hourly wage for women) / hourly wage for men
The statistical population consists of all employees in enterprises:
- with at least 10 employees;
- whose main economic activity is classified under the NACE Rev.2 sections B-S (-O).
There are no restrictions according to age or working hours. The gender pay gap therefore includes both full-time and part-time employees.
The concept of “wage” applied includes paid overtime as well as premiums that are paid at each payment period. Examples include premiums for night or weekend shifts. Premiums that are only paid exceptionally, such as thirteenth-month pay or double holiday pay, are excluded.
The gender pay gap is calculated every four years based on the survey on earnings. This was the case for the reference years 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. In the intervening years, Statbel estimates the pay gap based on NSSO data. For this, the figures from the most recent survey on earnings are updated based on an evolution derived from the NSSO datasets. The figures for 2023 were estimated in this way.
Finally, the national estimates are revised by Eurostat once every four years, namely after the publication of a new survey on earnings. The figures for the years 2007-2009, 2011-2013, 2015-2017 and 2019-2021 were then calculated by Eurostat.