Progress in closing gender pay gaps remains painfully slow, prompting increasing interest from governments in the use of pay transparency tools to promote pay equity. This chapter begins with an overview of the gender pay gap across OECD countries and discusses how pay transparency tools such as gender-neutral job evaluations and classifications, gender pay gap reporting, equal pay audits and salary disclosure pre‑employment could help to close the gap. It then provides an overview of recent developments and anticipated reforms in pay transparency measures across OECD countries. The chapter also synthesises available evaluation evidence on the effectiveness of different pay transparency approaches and concludes with an overview of the report’s key findings and policy recommendations.
Pay Transparency in Progress
Abstract
The pay gap between women and men is persistent, and progress in closing it slow. In 2024, the median woman working full time still earned, on average, around 10% less than their male counterpart across the OECD. In almost three decades (between 1995-2024), the OECD average gap has declined by around nine percentage points (p.p.). At this pace, it could take decades more to close remaining gaps, perpetuating inequalities that accumulate over the life course.
Against this backdrop, pay transparency tools such as gender-neutral job evaluation and classification, gender pay gap reporting, equal pay audits and salary disclosure pre‑employment have gained momentum amongst a majority of OECD countries.
Pay transparency systems across the OECD are in transition. Around three‑quarters of OECD countries have assessed or adapted one or more pay transparency tools since 2022, and/or report that they intend to implement changes to pay transparency in the near future (76% of OECD countries). The most substantial changes lie ahead as EU OECD countries prepare to transpose the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
Gender pay gap reporting requirements are becoming an OECD-wide norm. By the end of 2026, it is expected that 84% of OECD countries (32 of 38) will mandate private sector gender pay gap reporting, up from 21 out of 38 countries mandating it today. Major changes are also expected to reporting requirements, and with respect to job evaluation and classification systems.
Recent pay gap reporting reforms have focussed on evaluation of existing systems, expanding coverage to more employers and workers, expanding the breadth and depth of information reported, reducing reporting burden for employers, and strengthening transparency by making pay information more publicly accessible. An especially promising practice is the use of administrative data to partially or fully calculate gender pay gap information on behalf of private sector employers, as is done in Denmark, Lithuania and Portugal.
Gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems are a cornerstone of equal pay in labour markets as they allow systematic evaluation and comparison of the value of work, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. Where done effectively, they also enable organisations to identify pay gaps for work of equal value. There are varying levels of maturity across OECD countries as to the implementation of gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems. Major convergence in policy approaches and legal frameworks is expected as EU OECD countries implement the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
Rigorous evaluation of pay transparency tools remains limited and paints a mixed picture. Evidence suggests that pay gap reporting can narrow pay gaps where well-designed and implemented. Countries which have been the most successful in reducing gaps through pay gap reporting tend to rely on design features like straightforward compliance and third-party involvement, including transparency to the public.
Persistent gender pay gaps continue to reflect and reinforce gender inequality across OECD countries. In 2024, the median full-time working woman in the OECD earned on average 10% less than the median full-time working man, meaning that full-time working women make about 90 cents for every dollar or euro earned by men (Figure 1.1). The size of the pay gap varies considerably across countries, revealing both possibility and persistence, ranging from 1% in Belgium and Colombia to 29% in Korea (see endnote regarding Luxembourg).1
Difference between median earnings of men and women, in percentage of median earnings of men, 2024 or most recent available
Note: Estimates of earnings used in the calculations generally refer to unadjusted gross earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. This indicator is measured as a percentage of median earnings of men. Data for Chile, Hungary and Türkiye refer to 2023, and data for Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Luxembourg and Portugal refer to 2022.
Source: OECD (2026[1]), Gender pay gap (indicator), https://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/499.
Pay inequalities continue to restrict women’s social and economic opportunities, placing women at heightened risk of poverty and economic dependence. The gender pay gap translates into lost income, diminished retirement security, and constrained economic independence for millions of women (OECD, 2025[2]). These earnings disparities compound over women’s working lives, leading to reduced pension benefits and higher poverty risk in older age across most OECD countries (OECD, 2025[2]). Addressing gender and pay inequality is not merely a moral imperative, but an economic necessity. In an era of significant socio-demographic, economic, and technological change, persistent pay inequality represents and reflects a fundamental inefficiency (OECD, 2025[2]) – a failure to fully value and utilise half the workforce.
Although gaps have narrowed, progress in closing the gender pay gap remains painfully slow (Figure 1.2). Over the past three decades, the OECD average has declined by around 9 p.p., falling from around 19% in 1995 to roughly 10% by 2024. At this pace, it could take decades more to close remaining gaps. This sluggish pace of change perpetuates accumulated inequalities that women face over the life course. Every year of slow progress means another cohort of women earning less, saving less, and retiring with smaller pensions (OECD, 2025[2]; 2025[3]).
Difference between median earnings of men and women, in percentage of median earnings of men, at three earnings levels, selected countries, OECD average, 1995-2024
Note: The gender pay gap here is unadjusted and is calculated as the difference between the earnings of men and of women relative to the earnings of men.
Note: The gender wage gap is unadjusted and defined as the difference between median wages of women and men relative to the median wages of men. The indicator is based on gross earnings of full-time employees by earnings deciles (upper limits) reported in the OECD Distribution of Earnings Database. The most common earnings pay reporting periods are weekly and monthly earnings of full-time employees (for 30 out of 37 countries). Five countries use hourly earnings, and two countries use annual earnings. The distinction between full-time and part-time is according to national definitions as reported in the data source.
Source: OECD (2026[1]), Gender wage gap (indicator), http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/499.
Pay inequality is one of the top three most pressing gender equality priorities reported by OECD governments, a prioritisation that has remained broadly unchanged since 2016, when the OECD first began surveying governments on their gender equality priorities (OECD, 2025[2]).2
Policy approaches to address pay gaps must take aim at the structural inequalities that underpin them, as gender gaps cannot be explained solely by differences in education or labour market experience. Gender pay gaps reflect and reinforce broader gender inequalities in labour markets and society, including gender differences in unpaid care. Women continue to take on a disproportionate share of unpaid and domestic work – particularly around the birth of a child – which often implies disproportionately reducing their working hours, shifting to part-time employment or taking career breaks, with lasting consequences for earnings and career development (OECD, 2025[2]). Direct and indirect discrimination as well as gendered norms and stereotypes about appropriate types of work for men and women also continue to play a role (OECD, 2023[4]).
Persistent horizontal and vertical segregation in labour markets and the undervaluation of work performed predominantly by women also contribute to pay gaps. Women continue to be overrepresented in low-paid jobs and occupations and underrepresented in senior positions (OECD, 2025[2]).
In this context, the principle of equal pay for work of equal value is a cornerstone of gender equality in the labour market and a central element of international and national legal frameworks. Unlike the narrower concept of equal pay for equal work, which focusses on ensuring equal pay for identical or nearly identical jobs, the concept of equal pay for work of equal value could help to address the historic undervaluation of work typically performed by women, by ensuring that pay decisions are linked to a thorough and objective assessment of the value of work to be performed. Ensuring equal pay for work of equal value first requires assessing which work has equivalent value, comparing different jobs that may vary in tasks but involve comparable levels of skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
Gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems are increasingly applied to operationalise the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. Job evaluation systems assess and compare the relative value of different jobs using objective criteria, most commonly skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, allowing employers and social partners to identify jobs of equal value across occupational groups. Job classification systems then translate these assessments into pay structures by grouping jobs into grades or levels that determine remuneration. When designed and implemented in a gender-neutral manner, these systems provide a robust basis for detecting indirect pay discrimination and for ensuring that male‑ and female‑dominated jobs of equal value are rewarded comparably.
However, job evaluation and classification systems are not automatically gender neutral. Traditional approaches may embed implicit biases in the choice, definition or weighting of evaluation criteria, often overvaluing characteristics associated with male‑dominated occupations while overlooking or undervaluing skills typically associated with female‑dominated work, such as interpersonal, organisational, emotional or caring competences. Even well-designed evaluation processes can be undermined if classification structures preserve existing hierarchies or assign jobs assessed as having equal value to different pay grades. Ensuring gender neutrality therefore requires deliberate safeguards, including careful factor design, transparent weighting, and governance arrangements that explicitly address valuation bias.
Across the OECD, countries are at different stages in developing and mandating gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems. Almost 40% of OECD countries require private‑sector employers to conduct gender-neutral job evaluations, while others recommend their use or are implementing reforms. By contrast, far fewer countries mandate or recommend gender-neutral job classification systems, reflecting the greater complexity and institutional sensitivity of pay-setting mechanisms. Where countries specify evaluation criteria, there is strong convergence around the four core factors of skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, although definitions, weighting and employer discretion vary widely. Implementation is typically supported through a combination of institutional actors – including specialised equality bodies, labour ministries or government agencies, and social partners – and through tools such as analytical frameworks, methodological guidance, training and targeted initiatives to address the undervaluation of female‑dominated work.
Within the European Union, the Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970, see Box 1.2) significantly increases attention to the question of equal pay for work of equal value by clarifying employers’ obligations and reinforcing the use of objective, gender-neutral criteria for pay-setting. The Directive requires Member States to ensure that pay structures are based on transparent and gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems, and it places renewed emphasis on comparing jobs of equal value across occupational groups. As EU OECD countries work towards transposition, the Directive is driving convergence in legal frameworks and policy approaches, while also increasing demand for practical tools, guidance and capacity-building to support effective implementation (see Section 1.4).
Pay transparency tools can provide a strong basis to help identify and rectify some of the drivers of gender pay inequalities. Where done well, job evaluation and classification can enable employers to establish and compare the value of work (Chapter 2) and support effective gender pay gap reporting (Chapter 3). These processes can help reveal unjustified differences in pay between women and men performing the same work, or work of equal value. Equal pay audits, in turn, can help identify structural drivers of the pay gap and require companies to take action on unjustified pay differences (Chapter 3).
1.3.1. Public support for pay gap reporting
Pay transparency is a relatively well-accepted policy tool to address gender pay gaps, with 64% of respondents in the 27‑country OECD Risks that Matter Survey saying that they support pay transparency to reduce pay gaps (OECD, 2023[4]). Support for pay transparency was highest in Portugal, Chile, Mexico, Ireland and Greece, all with rates over 70%. Pay transparency measures also receive relatively high public support in a randomised experiment assessing the policy preference effects of different explanations (treatments) of the gender wage gap. The three randomised treatments revealed the country’s gender wage gap (Panel A), the gender wage gap and an explanation of low pay in “women’s jobs” (Panel B), and the gender wage gap and an explanation that much of the gap comes from within-firm pay gaps (Figure 1.3).
Average treatment effects (p.p.) across various policy preference outcomes in response to three randomised treatments presenting A. Basic gender wage gap statistic in a country; B. Basic gender wage gap statistic in a country plus an explanation of occupational segregation; C. Basic gender wage gap statistic in a country plus an explanation of within-firm pay gaps
Note: Data are sorted by size of average treatment effects. For each panel and policy, treatment effect (p.p.) represents the difference in support between the treatment group and control group. Support is measured as the share of participants who selected “Agree” or “Strongly agree” with support for each policy. Each treatment effect is calculated separately using the pooled sample via an ordinary least squares linear regression with country fixed effects; Standard errors are clustered at the country level. Randomisation occurred at the individual level within each country. The bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. Participants were randomly assigned to receive one of three messages about the gender wage gap (GWG) in their country: Panel A: “Basic GWG”: “A working woman in [country] earns [w] for every 1 [c] that a working man earns per month.” Panel B: “Occupational GWG”: “A working woman in [country] earns [w] for every 1 [c] that a working man earns per month. This reflects, in part, historically low pay in jobs that are mostly held by women, such as caregiving for children and older people.” [This attempts to offer a plain-language explanation of the horizontal gender wage gap; see OECD (2021[5]; 2025[2])]. Panel C: “Within-firm GWG”: “A working woman in [country] earns [w] for every 1 [c] that a working man earns per month. Much of this gap is explained by differences in pay between women and men working in the same firm.” [This explanation builds on related OECD cross-national research finding that much of the gender-wage gap is driven by practices within firms; see OECD (2021[6])]. In each treatment, “[country]” refers to the respondent’s country of residence and “[w]” presents women’s earnings as a value relative to one local currency (derived from the ILOSTAT indicator for average monthly earnings by gender), and “[c]” is the local currency. After receiving the message about the gender wage gap, respondents indicated their support for each of ten policies: a. increase minimum wages; b. enforce pay transparency through monitoring and penalties; c. require public disclosure of firms’ GWG*; d. implement pay transparency regulations (e.g. gender pay gap reporting) for employers (**); e. encourage women and men to choose less gender-typical careers; f. implement quotas in leadership positions; g. invest in information campaigns; h. invest in childcare; i. promote equal wages across jobs of equal value; j. adjust pension systems to compensate for care‑related leave.
* indicates the policy was only presented to respondents in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (countries with national gender pay gap reporting requirements for the private sector in 2024).
** indicates the policy was only presented to respondents in Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Türkiye and the United States (those without national gender pay gap reporting requirements for the private sector in 2024).
Source: Frey, V., Thomas, J. and Bacha, D. (forthcoming[7]), Causal effects of sharing gender wage gap information on policy preferences: Evidence from the 2024 OECD Risks that Matter Survey.
Pay transparency approaches are evolving rapidly, and since 2021, the OECD has developed an extensive database on pay transparency policies across countries, with analysis and reporting including:
The 2021 report Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender pay gap (OECD, 2021[5]), which provided an overview of policy approaches including firm-level gender pay gap reporting, equal pay audits, job classification systems, and requirements to address pay gaps within collective bargaining processes.
The 2023 report Reporting Gender Pay Gaps in OECD Countries: Guidance for Pay Transparency Implementation, Monitoring and Reform (OECD, 2023[4]), which offered an in-depth examination of one of the most widely adopted pay transparency instruments at the time – mandatory gender pay gap reporting requirements for private‑sector employers. This was followed by a series of workshops for practitioners on applications of tools such as enforcement mechanisms and digital tools for reporting.
With pay transparency measures evolving rapidly, this report presents an updated stocktaking of pay gap disclosure measures across OECD countries – as per information collected in July/August 2025 – together with an overview of recent and forthcoming changes in pay transparency measures in the OECD, and an in-depth examination of country approaches to gender-neutral job evaluation and classification, supporting equal pay for equal work, and work of equal value.
The remainder of this chapter provides an overview of recent and forthcoming developments in pay transparency measures across the OECD, based on country responses to the 2025 OECD Pay Transparency Questionnaire, supplemented with desk research (see Box 1.1). It then provides an overview of evidence on the effectiveness of different types of pay transparency measures and concludes by providing a high-level overview of key findings from the report, together with policy implications.
In June 2025, the OECD Secretariat distributed the 2025 Pay Transparency Questionnaire to all 38 OECD countries through the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee (ELSAC). Overall, 36 OECD countries provided a response to the questionnaire throughout the second half of 2025, with the bulk of data collection taking place in July/August 2025. Not all countries responded to all questions. As needed, supplementary information on remaining countries was completed via desk research and/or validated by delegations.
The questionnaire aimed to:
Update available evidence on national pay gap reporting and pay auditing measures, by asking countries to review and indicate any changes to the information they submitted in 2022 to support preparations of the 2023 report Reporting Gender Pay Gaps in OECD Countries: Guidance for Pay Transparency Implementation, Monitoring and Reform (2023[4]); and
Collect new information on mandatory pay gap reporting measures, salary disclosure requirements for advertised positions, and gender-neutral job evaluation and classification.
The questionnaire responses were also the basis for the preparation of the country case studies presented in Chapter 4, for which additional evidence was collected through in-depth consultation with experts from key national administrations as well as desk research.
Pay transparency tools remain relatively recent developments in many countries and pay transparency systems in the OECD are undergoing a period of significant transition. Most OECD countries have recently reformed or strengthened their pay transparency measures, or plan to do so in the coming years. Around three‑quarters of OECD countries have changed or assessed one or more pay transparency tools since 2022, and/or report that they intend to implement changes to pay transparency in the near future (76% of OECD countries). Just over a third of OECD countries (37%) have adapted or assessed one or more pay transparency tools in the past three years – since the OECD’s last stocktaking on pay gap reporting in 2023 – and 68% of OECD countries report that they intend to update their pay transparency measures in the near future3 (Figure 1.4). The most substantial changes lie ahead, particularly as EU OECD countries prepare to transpose the EU Pay Transparency Directive (for more information on the Directive, see Box 1.2).
Overview of countries reporting planned changes to (any) pay transparency measures in the coming years, July/August 2025
Note: Countries were asked to indicate if there were any plans to amend pay transparency measures in the coming years (including, for EU member countries, specifically to implement the EU Pay Transparency Directive). Information is current as of July/August 2025, when the bulk of data collection took place.
Source: 2025 OECD Pay Transparency Questionnaire, supplemented by desk research.
1.4.1. Looking back: Recent trends in pay gap reporting
The 2023 OECD publication Reporting Gender Pay Gaps in OECD Countries highlighted that, at that time, 21 out of 38 countries nationally mandated gender pay gap reporting by (at least some) private sector firms, meaning that affected private sector employers were systematically and periodically required to calculate gender pay gaps in their firm, and – most of the time – to report information on pay gaps to key stakeholders, such as workers’ representatives, workers, government authorities, and/or the general public.
That report found that – while the principles of pay gap reporting are similar – reporting systems varied significantly across OECD countries in terms of the pool of employers covered, the types of information that they are required to report, whether follow-up action is mandated when employers identify pay inequalities, what information employers are required to share and with whom, and the degree to which the requirements were enforced. It also found that the design and implementation of pay transparency measures has important implications for their efficacy (OECD, 2023[4]).
Since the collection information for that report (in 2022), a considerable number of OECD countries have assessed and/or amended national pay transparency initiatives. In the period between 2022 and 2025, around a third of OECD countries report having assessed or implemented changes to one or more pay transparency tool (14 out of 38, or 37%).4 Assessments of and/or changes in connection with pay gap reporting were reported by Australia, Austria, Estonia, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom. Assessments of or changes in broader pay transparency tools have also been reported in Czechia, Germany and Greece (discussed in further detail below).
A considerable proportion of the OECD countries that already mandated gender pay gap reporting for private companies have taken steps to iterate and improve their approach. Over a third of the 21 OECD countries that already had national mandatory pay gap reporting requirements for private sector employers (8 out of 21, or 38%) assessed or implemented changes related to private sector pay gap reporting requirements in the period between 2022 and July/August 2025. This includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom. Changes to public sector reporting requirements were also reported by Australia, France and New Zealand.
In the OECD countries that assessed or adapted existing mandatory pay gap reporting requirements in the private or public sector, the focus has largely been on evaluation/assessment (reported in four countries); expanding the coverage of requirements (four countries), expanding the type of pay and non-pay information that employers are required to report (three countries), on supporting employers with reporting and simplifying reporting processes (three countries), and on strengthening transparency (i.e. making pay information more publicly accessible, in one country) (see Table 1.1). Taken together, this reflects some momentum toward greater coverage, greater transparency, simplification and more evaluation. These developments go some way to addressing known gaps in the design of reporting systems and could provide a strong basis for further improvements.
Note: OECD countries were asked to review the information they provided in response to the OECD’s 2022 Pay Transparency Questionnaire, and to indicate if there had been any changes. Information is presented for OECD countries with national pay gap reporting requirements in the private and/or public sector in 2022. Information is current as of July/August 2025, when the bulk of data collection took place.
Source: OECD Secretariat, based on 2025 OECD Pay Transparency Questionnaire, supplemented by desk research.
Four OECD countries reported recent assessments in connection with pay gap reporting legislation and processes, covering policy processes and/or pay gap outcomes, including in Australia (2025[8]), Belgium (ongoing), Norway (2024[9]) and the United Kingdom (2023[10]). Assessments related to one or more pay transparency approaches have also been carried out in Finland (2022[11]) (ongoing), Germany (2023[12]), Iceland, Portugal (2024), Sweden (2024[13]) and Switzerland (2025[14]). Most of the reviews point to areas of improvement to strengthen existing requirements. For detailed findings from the published assessments, see Section 1.5).
In four countries – Australia, France, Ireland and Japan – the coverage of reporting requirements has grown. This has involved expansions in the number of employers required to report, either by lowering the firm size threshold for reporting (in Ireland and Japan) or by introducing/extending public sector reporting (in Australia, which expanded existing requirements to public sector employers, and France, where public sector requirements have been expanded to a broader pool of organisations). Meanwhile in New Zealand, reporting requirements for public sector organisations have been withdrawn, but reporting remains strongly recommended. For further details on these changes, see Section 3.2 on coverage of reporting requirements.
In at least three countries – Australia, Belgium and Japan – the pay and non-pay information that affected employers are required to report has expanded. In addition to already-existing requirements, Australian employers are now required to report on wages by location; employers in Belgium have become required to report on gender statistics for employer representatives; and in Japan employers have newly become required to report on the proportion of women in managerial positions. For further details, see Section 3.3 on the required content of pay gap reporting. Meanwhile in Austria, governance related to pay gap reporting in the public sector has changed, with responsibility shifting from the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport to the Federal Chancellery. Responsibility relating to reporting for the private sector remains in the Federal Ministry for Labour, Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection.
At least three countries – Australia, Ireland and Italy – have taken steps to simplify reporting processes and/or support employers to meet their obligations. These types of adaptations can help reduce administrative burden for companies and help to ensure that employers are aware of and comply with their obligations. Where supported by digital tools, these efforts can also help to promote greater accountability, by facilitating transparency and oversight (discussed in further detail in Sections 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7). Italy has updated its online reporting process with new pre‑compilation and retrieval features to simplify reporting for employers, and Ireland has been working on development of a gender pay gap reporting portal, intended to provide a fully searchable centralised database of employers’ pay gap reports. For further details, see Section 3.7. Australia has published a gender pay gap analysis guide to support employers to find the causes of their gender pay gaps, and an action planning tool to help employers identify actions they can take to improve gender equality in their workplace.
Australia has also strengthened accountability measures by increasing the public visibility of pay gap information, with Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency publishing gender pay gap information for relevant private sector employers for the first time in 2024 and for relevant Commonwealth public sector employers for the first time in 2025, elaborated in further detail in Section 3.6.
In recent years, pay transparency measures and/or legislation have also been implemented in a handful of OECD countries without existing (national, mandatory) requirements for gap reporting by private sector companies. Czechia, Estonia, Poland and Greece report changes to pay transparency measures in the period between 2022 and July/August 2025. Since 2025, Czechia has banned confidentiality clauses in employment contracts to promote pay transparency. Estonia launched a voluntary digital tool that enables employers to monitor the gender pay gap in their organisation, based on administrative data from Statistics Estonia’s data exchange service. The tool cannot be used for employer reporting in line with the EU Pay Transparency Directive, as the indicators in the tool differ from those required by the Directive (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, n.d.[15]). In 2025, Poland passed legislation transposing parts of the EU Pay Transparency Directive, related to pay transparency prior to employment (discussed in further detail in Chapter 3), with changes having come into effect in December 2025. Amongst other initiatives, Greece is developing an Equality Label intended to be awarded to public and private sector employers that implement policies to promote equal treatment and opportunities for men and women, as well as to support efforts aimed at preventing and combating violence and harassment in the workplace.
1.4.2. Looking ahead: Planned developments in pay transparency across the OECD
Looking across the OECD, the most significant changes to pay transparency lie ahead. 26 out of 38 OECD countries (68%) report that they intend to update their pay transparency measures in the coming years. This includes Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Collectively, these changes will represent a significant expansion in the coverage and depth of pay gap reporting requirements across the OECD.
This significant expansion in pay transparency measures is being driven largely by the EU Pay Transparency Directive (Box 1.2). All OECD countries that are also members of the European Union are planning changes in requirements on pay transparency. These planned changes will involve new implementation(s), adaptations or extensions of gender pay gap reporting, pay auditing and other salary transparency measures to meet the requirements of the Directive.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970), adopted on 10 May 2023, aims to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms.
Minimum standards for pay transparency across the European Union
The Directive establishes EU-level rules to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women. It requires EU Member States to transpose its provisions into national law by 7 June 2026. Key requirements include:
Pay transparency prior to employment: Employers must provide applicants with information about the starting pay or pay range for a position, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, in a manner that ensures an informed and transparent negotiation on pay – such as in a published job vacancy notice or prior to the job interview. Employers may not ask applicants about their prior salary history, and job vacancy notices and job titles must be gender neutral.
Right to information for employees: Workers have the right to request information from their employer about their individual pay level and about average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value. This right applies to all workers regardless of employer size.
Gender-neutral job evaluation and classification: Employers must have pay structures in place that guarantee equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. Analytical tools or methodologies should be made available to help employers assess and compare the value of work based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. These criteria must include skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions, and where appropriate, any other factors relevant to the specific job or position. Importantly, the Directive specifies that relevant soft skills must not be undervalued. Where job classification systems are used for determining pay, they must be based on the same gender-neutral criteria and drawn up so as to exclude any discrimination on grounds of sex. For a more thorough discussion, see Chapter 2.
Pay gap reporting: Public and private sector employers with 100 or more workers must report on gender pay gaps. Employers with at least 250 employees must report annually starting 7 June 2027; employers with 150‑249 employees must report every three years from the same date; and employers with 100‑149 employees must report every three years starting 7 June 2031. The Directive specifies minimum standards for what information employers must report, which includes:
a) Mean and median gender pay gap (in basic salary and separately for complementary or variable components)
b) Proportion of female and male workers i) receiving complementary or variable components and ii) in each quartile pay band
c) Gender pay gap by categories of workers, disaggregated by basic salary and complementary or variable components.
Public disclosure of pay gap information: Member States must designate a monitoring body responsible for collecting pay gap data from employers and making this information publicly available. This should be done in an easily accessible and user-friendly manner that allows for comparison across individual employers, sectors, and regions within the country, with data from the previous four years made accessible where available. This public disclosure requirement may be particularly significant given suggestive evidence that public reporting can help drive impact (see Section 1.5) – transparency that enables comparison and public scrutiny can create stronger incentives for employers to address pay inequalities than confidential reporting alone, and/or can help empower workers to act upon pay inequities.
Joint pay assessments: Where pay reporting reveals a gender pay gap of at least 5% in any category of workers, and the employer has not justified the gap based on objective, gender-neutral criteria or remedied it within six months, employers must conduct a “joint pay assessment”, similar to what the OECD has referred to as an equal pay audit (OECD, 2023[4]). The Directive sets out minimum standards for what joint pay assessments must include.
Follow up and enforcement mechanisms: The Directive embeds strong enforcement provisions. Where unjustified gender pay differences exist, employers must take remedial action in co‑operation with worker representatives, labour inspectorates, and/or equality bodies. This includes reviewing or establishing gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems. Member States must designate monitoring bodies to oversee compliance (as well as publishing employer pay gap data). The Directive also strengthens access to justice, including shifting the burden of proof to employers and establishing minimum limitation periods of three years for bringing equal pay claims.
Early signals suggest transposition of the Directive is varied in pace and substance
As of November 2025, transposition is progressing across EU OECD countries, and early indications suggest that:
Transposition is progressing at varying speeds – some countries have already transposed parts of the Directive into law, some countries have published proposals or draft legislation, while in other countries discussions on transposition are ongoing.
Transposition of the Directive is likely to vary on key points – particularly as countries adapt existing (varied) systems to new requirements, and as some countries may choose to go “over and above” the minimum standards set out in the Directive.
Source: European Parliament and Council of the European Union (2023[16]), Directive (EU) 2023/970 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms, Official Journal of the European Union, L 132/21, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2023/970/oj; and 2025 OECD Pay Transparency Questionnaire.
Eleven EU OECD countries – Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia – are working toward implementation of systematic mandatory private sector pay gap reporting and pay auditing as they currently do not have such requirements in place (Czechia and Greece currently have ad hoc pay auditing requirements).
The other EU OECD countries will need to adapt their existing pay gap reporting requirements, in some cases significantly.5 At least five of these countries – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy and Lithuania – will need to introduce equal pay auditing requirements (or “joint pay assessments,” as they are referred to in the Directive), requiring employers to assess and act on unjustified pay inequalities above a 5% threshold (see Box 1.2 for further detail). In line with the requirements of the Directive, some countries report plans to strengthen accountability by requiring employers to report to a designated government body, which would then publish pay gap information in a way that is publicly accessible and enables comparison between employers. Other anticipated changes reported by countries in response to the 2025 OECD Pay Transparency Questionnaire include strengthening monitoring, enforcement and access to justice mechanisms; extending coverage to both the public and private sector; and implementing pre‑employment salary transparency measures.
Anticipated changes in Iceland, for instance, are set to amend its Equal Pay System significantly:6 a bill presented to Parliament in January 2026 proposes to abolish the existing equal pay certification requirement and replace it with a mandatory reporting obligation, under which employers with 50 or more employees would submit data to the Directorate of Equality demonstrating that pay decisions are based on gender-neutral criteria. The change would raise the employee reporting threshold from 25 to 50, reducing the number of employers covered, while aiming to reduce administrative and financial burden associated with the current system.
Many countries also report planned changes to gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems and tools to compare the value of work, with considerable implications for how employers assess and ensure equal pay for equal work, and work of equal value. As EU OECD countries work to transpose the Pay Transparency Directive, they are at very different stages in relation to job evaluation and classification systems, ranging from advanced implementation to early-stage consultation (see Chapter 2). Several countries have already taken concrete steps, including adapting the legislation (e.g. Spain) and launching targeted initiatives or reforms (e.g. Belgium, Greece and Lithuania), while a growing number of countries are developing comprehensive frameworks, methodologies and tools to support gender-neutral job evaluation (e.g. Czechia, Finland, Latvia and Poland). At the same time, some countries are focussing on specific legal or procedural elements of transposition of the Directive, including clarifying definitions of work of equal value, strengthening pay transparency obligations, or embedding job evaluation requirements in collective bargaining systems (e.g. Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic and Sweden). Finally, several countries have established working groups or initiated consultations but have so far provided limited public detail on concrete transposition plans or timelines.
Expansions in pay transparency are anticipated beyond the EU, too, where some countries have announced and tabled legislation to strengthen pay transparency. In Chile, discussions are ongoing on a pay equity bill, which would:
Require employers with 50 or more employees to conduct annual job evaluations using objective, technically defined criteria, and to establish an internal gender-balanced committees to oversee this process
Require employers to maintain detailed records of job positions and develop Equal Pay Plans containing sex-disaggregated data on hierarchical levels, functions, remuneration, and pay; and
Place the burden of proof on employers to prove that pay inequalities are not discriminatory: unexplained wage differentials are presumed discriminatory unless objectively justified by the employer, with judicial decisions able to impose corrective measures, fines, and repayment of unjustified salary differences.
Building on its existing gender pay gap reporting requirements, the United Kingdom has signalled its intention to introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for employers with 250 or more employees, conducting a public consultation on the proposal between March-June 2025 (Office for Equality and Opportunity, 2025[17]). New legislation7 would also require employers that are already in scope of gender pay gap reporting requirements to prepare and publish action plans alongside their gender pay gap data (currently voluntary for employers) – addressing a gap identified in June 2019, when it was reported that only around half of employers that were required to report gender pay gaps published such plans (House of Lords, 2025[18]).
Taken together, and if implemented as anticipated, pay transparency is set to increase considerably across and within OECD countries in the coming years. With pay transparency measures set to expand significantly across and within countries, and with countries taking varying approaches to achieving common goals, there is both a strong need and significant opportunity for peer learning – including ongoing monitoring and evaluation to pinpoint which design features prove effective, and what works to narrow pay gaps.
The remainder of this report is structured as follows. Chapter 2 provides and in-depth overview of country approaches to comparing the value of work, elaborating approaches to gender-neutral job evaluation and classification; Chapter 3 provides an updated stocktaking of pay transparency measures across OECD countries, with a focus on pay gap reporting and pay auditing, and salary transparency pre‑employment; and Chapter 4 presents in-depth case studies of pay transparency systems in a select number of OECD countries, namely Belgium, France, Portugal and Spain, with a focus on approaches to gender-neutral job evaluation and classification, as well as on pay gap reporting and auditing.
Despite the increasing adoption of pay transparency measures, rigorous evaluation of these tools remains limited in cross-country coverage, and evidence paints a notably mixed picture regarding both their effectiveness and the mechanisms through which they operate. This section synthesises the available empirical evidence on the wage outcomes of pay gap reporting, updating key evidence included in OECD’s 2023 report Reporting Gender Pay Gaps in OECD Countries (OECD, 2023[4]) with an overview of new evaluations released through to 2025. The overall message remains the same: pay gap reporting can help narrow gender pay gaps, but impact hinges on design and implementation – including the degree of public disclosure, compliance, and third-party involvement.
The theoretical case for pay transparency and gender pay gap reporting rests on three key mechanisms: empowering employees to negotiate or seek better opportunities by revealing pay disparities; activating reputational pressures on employers through public exposure; and constraining discriminatory practices by making unfair pay more visible and legally risky. However, transparency may also generate unintended consequences, including pay compression (achieving equality by reducing or slowing men’s wage growth, rather than raising women’s), wage structure revelations that reduce employee morale, shifts toward less visible compensation forms, and/or administrative costs passed on to workers.
Evidence on other types of pay transparency measures, such as equal pay audits and salary transparency in job posts, remains extremely limited and concentrated in only a few countries, making it difficult to generalise conclusions about their effectiveness. In theory, pay auditing systems – which require more comprehensive analysis and/or follow-up action from employers – may have an even greater impact on closing pay gaps than merely reporting them. Nevertheless, experience from Sweden (outlined below and in Box 2.2 in Chapter 2) suggests only a modest impact on gender pay gaps. Similarly, evidence on salary disclosure requirements in job advertisements draws from a single‑country experience. Evaluations in Austria highlight design and implementation challenges.
Although effective pay transparency can help to promote pay equity, it is important to bear in mind that pay transparency measures face significant limitations. While pay transparency measures can illuminate pay disparities and support employer and employees’ efforts to address them, they cannot – on their own – change educational choices, redistribute unpaid care work, transform workplace cultures that penalise flexibility, or fully stop discrimination in recruitment and promotion. Pay gap reporting also goes a limited way towards addressing horizontal segregation. Effectively addressing these deeper drivers of pay inequality requires complementary policies throughout the full life course. A further limitation is that currently, the task of spotting, raising, and correcting pay inequities continues to fall largely on individual employees, placing a substantial burden on them (OECD, 2023[4]). Additionally, pay transparency does not guarantee that improvements in women’s wages will not be offset elsewhere, including through slower growth in men’s pay. Overall, previous OECD work has suggested that pay transparency measures must be well-designed and implemented to work effectively.
1.5.1. Evidence on the effectiveness of pay gap reporting
Countries with more successful pay gap reporting measures – in terms of narrowing the gender pay gap – also tend to be countries with public disclosure and/or third-party oversight (OECD, 2023[4]). Positive effects of gender pay gap reporting were documented in Denmark (Bennedsen et al., 2022[19]), France (Briard, Meluzzi and Ruault, 2021[20]) (descriptive evidence) and the United Kingdom (for a literature review, see (OECD, 2023[4]), with an important mechanism appearing to be public disclosure creating reputational pressures on employers. Some evidence suggests employee empowerment through enhanced bargaining power in specific institutional settings such as universities (see Box 1.3). Austria showed null effects linked to company income reporting despite universal compliance (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Frauen, 2015[21]; Böheim and Gust, 2021[22]; Gulyas, Seitz and Sinha, 2023[23]), and Sweden found only marginal effects of pay audits among small employers (Swedish National Audit Office, 2019[24]). New evidence since 2023 strengthens these findings, particularly for the United Kingdom, and provides insights from Australia.
Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) commissioned a multi-year evaluation (2025[8]) to assess the effectiveness of recent reforms to the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, focussing on four key changes: requiring employers to share reporting outputs with their boards, the public publication of employer gender pay gaps, a new gender equality standard for large employers, and forthcoming gender equality targets. Early findings show that employers view WGEA reporting, data and tools as strong motivators for action. The evaluation aims to track change over time, strengthen WGEA’s own accountability and ensure its efforts are effectively targeted to help employers accelerate workplace gender equality.
Portugal’s evaluation of Law No. 60/2018 (CITE, GEP-MTSSS, & ACT, 2024[25]), covering the period 2019-2024, assessed four key mechanisms for promoting pay transparency: statistical monitoring of pay differences, employer obligations to maintain transparent pay policies, remediation plans for companies with identified pay gaps, and individual workers’ right to request CITE opinions on pay discrimination. The evaluation found that while the gender pay gap has declined since 2010, uptake of key instruments remains limited – only 6.8% of eligible companies generated their pay balance report. Of the 1 383 employers notified by the Labour Inspectorate (ACT) to submit remediation plans, 79% had complied at the time of reporting. The Equal Pay Seal, awarded to companies with a pay gap between ‑1% and 1%, was granted to over 17 500 employers in 2021, falling to 14 000 in 2022. The evaluation recommended expanding coverage to the full public sector, clarifying legislation with clearer definitions and minimum requirements for pay assessment plans, improving the timeliness of statistical data, and aligning criteria between the Equal Pay Seal and ACT notification processes. It also highlighted the need to update professional categories in reporting systems which were linked to apparent inequalities due to outdated classifications.
The United Kingdom now has extensive new evidence supporting the effectiveness of its 2017 gender pay gap reporting requirement. A national evaluation of the United Kingdom’s reporting regulations (Government Equalities Office, 2023[10]) concludes that the measure has achieved most of the intended objectives to “some extent”. Despite pandemic-related limitations in the evidence base, the evaluation concludes that the regulations have increased transparency, contributed to reductions in pay gaps for organisations just above the reporting threshold, and helped narrow pay gaps for just over half of employers that report. However, the review found that only around half of employers are taking or planning effective action to close their gaps, and increased transparency has not necessarily translated into greater public understanding of the gender pay gap. The review recommends retaining the regulations in their current form.
While national-level evaluations provide the primary evidence base for assessing pay transparency approaches, studies of specific institutional contexts offer complementary insights into mechanisms and conditions under which transparency can empower employees to negotiate better outcomes.
Evaluations of pay transparency initiatives in universities in the United Kingdom provide some evidence in support of the employee empowerment mechanism. Gamage et al. (2020[26]) investigated a 2007 pay transparency intervention in research-intensive universities that enabled public access to average annual earnings disaggregated by gender. Using a quasi‑experimental approach based on event studies with matched employee‑employer administrative data, the authors find that female academics’ earnings increased by 0.62 p.p. compared to male counterparts, reducing the gender pay gap by 4.37%. The main mechanism was female employees negotiating higher wages, particularly among senior female academics – pointing to the employee empowerment channel.
A study of Canadian universities also finds a positive impact of disclosure on remediating pay gaps, and finds that the impact of such measures is amplified in contexts with strong equity norms and employee representation. Baker et al. (2023[27]) study public sector salary disclosure laws implemented at different times across provinces. These laws enable public access to individual faculty salaries above specified thresholds at Canadian universities. The study finds that disclosure reduced gender pay gaps among faculty by approximately 20‑30%, with effects driven by a combination of raises for underpaid women and slower wage growth for highly paid men. However, the authors note important context-specific features of the university setting – including strong norms around pay equity and active employee unions – that may amplify transparency’s effects relative to private sector contexts.
These institutional studies suggest that transparency can activate employee empowerment mechanisms when combined with 1) individual-level salary information (rather than only aggregated statistics), 2) professional contexts with relatively transparent job classifications and performance criteria, and 3) institutional structures (unions, equity policies) supporting employees in acting on pay information. However, the specific conditions present in universities – including strong collective representation, and established equity frameworks – limit the generalisability of these findings to broader labour markets.
Source: OECD (2023[4]), Reporting Gender Pay Gaps in OECD Countries: Guidance for Pay Transparency Implementation, Monitoring and Reform; Gamage et al. (2020[26]), Pay transparency initiative and gender pay gap: Evidence from research-intensive universities in the UK; Baker et al. (2023[27]), “Pay transparency and the gender gap”.
1.5.2. Evidence on equal pay audits reveals potential but also highlights implementation challenges
Equal pay audits – which require employers to systematically analyse pay structures and often conduct “work of equal value” assessments – represent a more comprehensive approach than simple pay gap reporting. However, evidence from Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland reveals significant implementation challenges, with reviews suggesting that audits risk becoming compliance exercises rather than catalysts for change.
An evaluation of Norway’s mandatory pay mapping requirement found that, despite notable implementation challenges – including requirements that many companies find extensive and resource‑demanding, with particular difficulty in conducting “work of equal value” assessments – the measure can support action on gender equality within companies (Hardoy, Schøne and Østbakken, 2024[9]). The evaluation analysed annual reports from a selection of Norwegian companies and municipalities and interviewed employer organisations and advisors. The results highlight wide variation in how companies categorise jobs and conduct their assessments; the study noted that to ensure transparency, companies should disclose the criteria used for job group categorisation. At the same time, many employers were found to uncover pay gaps that they were not aware of, showing that the requirement can effectively surface pay inequalities that would otherwise remain hidden. The requirement appears most effective at generating internal reflection, improving awareness of gender pay disparities, and encouraging employers to consider corrective measures. However, its effectiveness in addressing unequal pay for “work of equal value” is limited where companies attribute pay gaps to external structural factors (e.g. labour market segregation) rather than internal practices, reducing the likelihood of remediation. The evaluation also identified a tension between enabling national oversight of pay equity trends and supporting company-specific internal analysis, recommending the development of a portal for uploading reports to enhance transparency without forcing standardised comparisons, which the authors felt might undermine the primary goal of stimulating internal equality work.
New qualitative research with Swedish municipalities suggests that pay auditing can become a compliance exercise rather than a catalyst for change, with audit processes operating separately from core salary decisions (Salminen-Karlsson and Fogelberg Eriksson, 2022[28]) (Salminen-Karlsson and Fogelberg Eriksson, 2024[29]). Studies find that audits can become bureaucratic compliance exercises decoupled from organisational decision making, with employers routinely justifying pay differences through reference to experience, market factors, and sector-specific conditions. Additionally, structural features of Swedish industrial relations – including sector-based collective bargaining arrangements – may contribute to pay differences across occupations that transparency within job categories does not directly address (Carlson, 2019[30]) (see Box 2.2 in Chapter 2 for a detailed examination of Sweden’s experience).
Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice’s interim report (2025) shows widespread non-compliance with the country’s equal pay analysis obligations, which require companies with 100+ employees to 1) conduct and 2) independently verify internal pay analyses and 3) inform staff of the results. Introduced in 2020 to strengthen the constitutional right to equal pay, Switzerland’s evaluation finds that, although 81% of the surveyed companies had reported that they had met obligation 1), the other obligations were met at lower rates. Taken together, just under half of the surveyed companies reported that they had fulfilled all three obligations. The report cites low awareness, limited understanding of legal duties and, critically, the absence of sanctions. The Federal Council presented these findings to Parliament and, in light of compliance gaps, has decided to accelerate its planned evaluation of the law’s effectiveness from 2029 to 2027. The upcoming assessment is expected to examine whether the obligations are improving pay equality in practice and whether stronger enforcement or additional measures are needed, signalling that reforms may be considered given current gaps. While pay gap reporting is mandatory for affected companies, Switzerland is currently one of few OECD countries that reports limited oversight or enforcement of private sector companies’ compliance with the reporting requirements: oversight and enforcement is conducted in the context of public procurement and subsidies – including through pay equity audits and inspections – though broader enforcement of the Gender Equality Act analysis requirement outside of this context is lacking.8 Country approaches to oversight and enforcement of pay gap reporting requirements are discussed in more detail in Section 3.6 of Chapter 3, and in Chapter 6 of the 2023 OECD report Reporting Gender Pay Gaps in OECD Countries.
1.5.3. New evidence on other pay transparency measures
Gender-neutral job evaluations
Emerging evidence of gender-neutral job evaluation measures highlight both their value and the challenges of implementation. Analyses from Finland, Iceland and Sweden reveal a complex picture: Finland’s landscape of job evaluation tools is broad and largely non-discriminatory in its foundations, yet gaps remain in transparency and accessibility; Iceland’s experience highlights that cross-institutional comparisons of work of equal value remain underdeveloped even where internal job evaluation systems are well established; and Sweden’s experience suggests that compliance risks are significant where assessments become bureaucratic exercises disconnected from meaningful organisational change. For more detail see Section 2.2.3.
Information rights
Evaluations of Germany’s pay transparency tools (workers’ right to request comparators’ pay information) demonstrate how institutional factors can support – and implementations can constrain – meaningful impact on the gender pay gap.
Vaccaro et al. (2024[31]) examine the short-term effectiveness of Germany’s 2017 Pay Transparency Act, which grants employees in firms with 200 or more employees the right to request information about the pay of comparable colleagues. Using administrative data linked with establishment characteristics and a regression discontinuity design, they find no overall effects on the unexplained gender pay gap. However, the policy significantly reduced the raw gender pay gap by approximately 23% in medium-sized firms (200‑500 employees), with effects concentrated in establishments with works councils or collective bargaining agreements. Notably, establishments lacking these institutional structures saw increases in the unexplained gender pay gap following the law’s introduction. Findings suggest that employee representation mechanisms play a mediating role in translating transparency rights into tangible pay equity outcomes: without such institutional support, individual employees may lack the bargaining power or resources to act on pay information, even when legally entitled to request it.
The second official evaluation of the Pay Transparency Act (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 2023[12]) shows minimal improvement compared to the first official evaluation (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 2019[32]). Use of the individual information right remained essentially stagnant at 4% of eligible employees in both evaluation periods. Awareness of the law remained persistently low, and while some companies continued to review their pay structures, there was no evidence of meaningful progress in reducing the gender pay gap between the two evaluation periods. The legislation has not meaningfully reduced either the unadjusted (18%) or adjusted (7%) gender pay gap at the national level. The evaluation concludes that, without substantial reform to increase uptake and strengthen enforcement, the Act is unlikely to achieve its aims.
Salary disclosure in job advertisements
Evidence on salary disclosures in job advertisements (discussed in further detail in Chapter 3) remains limited in geographic focus, meaning there is insufficient evidence to draw generalisable conclusions about effectiveness of such a requirement. Evaluations in Austria highlight significant design and implementation challenges (discussed in further detail in Section 3.8).
1.5.4. Implementation features have implications for the effectiveness of pay transparency measures
The stark contrast between positive and null findings highlights the critical importance of implementation features (Frey and Alajääskö, 2023[33]; Bennedsen, Larsen and Wei, 2023[34]). Several important patterns emerge across this body of evidence.
First, design of the requirements matters. Pay gap reporting with public disclosure and/or third-party oversight (Australia, Denmark and the United Kingdom) shows more consistent positive effects than individual information rights without strong institutional support (Germany) or mandatory audits without active compliance assessment or sanctions (Switzerland. To be noted in Switzerland, there is a sanctions regime in the context of public procurement and subsidies9).
Second, implementation features are important. Employee representation mechanisms can help ensure that individual information rights can be translated into action; and effective communication, education and oversight could help prevent audit requirements from becoming bureaucratic exercises. Austria and Sweden show that even well-designed requirements may become compliance exercises when awareness is low and organisational processes are decoupled from pay decisions. Switzerland’s experience demonstrates that obligations can fail to meet their intended aims when oversight and enforcement mechanisms are weaker.
Third, “work of equal value” assessments emerge as a persistent implementation challenge across different measure types. Norway’s evaluation reveals that while pay mapping effectively surfaces hidden gaps, employers struggle with equal value comparisons and often attribute disparities to external structural factors. Sweden’s experience similarly shows that audit processes can become decoupled from organisational decision making when employers routinely justify differences through market factors and sectoral conditions.
Notably, where pay gap reporting requirements narrow gaps, reductions are achieved almost exclusively through wage compression – slowing men’s wage growth rather than raising women’s wages (Bennedsen et al., 2022[19]; Blundell et al., 2025[35]; Baker et al., 2023[27]). This mechanism has important distributional implications and may explain some resistance to transparency policies. However, it is important to note that survey evidence indicates public support for pay transparency remains high (see Section 1.3.1).
Finally, regular and rigorous evaluations are lacking in most countries – making it difficult to assess the independent effects of different design features. The conclusions presented here are culled from fewer than a dozen high-quality evaluations, even as nearly all OECD countries have some form of pay transparency tools in place.
Evaluative evidence notwithstanding, the existing studies suggest that transparency alone is insufficient – design and implementation are critically important. Disclosure generates information that can be used by multiple actors to drive change: ideally, employers themselves would analyse reported data to identify and remedy pay gaps proactively, rather than placing the burden on workers to challenge inequities. However, employer self-correction often requires additional mechanisms – such as mandatory action plans, external audits, or meaningful penalties for non-compliance – to ensure that analysis translates into remedial action. Where such mechanisms are absent, employees, regulators, or public audiences may play important accountability roles, though this requires that these actors have the capacity to access, scrutinise and act on disclosed information. The choice between different pay transparency measures involves trade‑offs: pay gap reporting with public disclosure may generate stronger reputational pressures but provides less detailed information; individual information rights empower workers directly but require strong institutional support, including workers’ representatives; mandatory audits can surface detailed inequalities but risk becoming compliance exercises without effective follow-up action. In the absence of either proactive employer action or effective accountability mechanisms, transparency requirements risk becoming compliance exercises that impose administrative costs while failing to challenge the organisational practices and cultural norms that perpetuate gender pay inequality.
Strengthening and institutionalising gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems is a challenging but critical component of enforcing equal pay for work of equal value. This includes clearly defining objective, gender-neutral criteria (notably skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions), ensuring that these criteria explicitly capture and appropriately value skills prevalent in female‑dominated occupations, and embedding job evaluation within pay-setting processes, collective bargaining frameworks, and pay transparency mechanisms. Where job classification systems are used, governments should ensure that they do not reproduce historical hierarchies that undervalue women’s work and that jobs assessed as being of equal value are effectively aligned within pay structures.
Effective implementation of gender-neutral job evaluation and classification systems requires more than legal mandates: governments should invest in careful oversight, guidance and capacity-building to translate formal compliance into substantive pay equity outcomes. This includes providing accessible analytical tools and methodologies, targeted support for SMEs, training for employers and workers’ representatives, and accountability mechanisms that scrutinise both the quality of job evaluations and the justifications given for pay differences. Regular evaluation of job evaluation and classification systems – particularly in highly segregated labour markets – can help identify where interventions are needed to address persistent undervaluation of female‑dominated work.
More frequent, good-quality evaluations are needed to understand the implications of pay transparency tools. Given the prevalence of pay gap reporting requirements, it has become increasingly important to understand better “what works” in their design and implementation. Ongoing evaluation and peer learning across countries will be particularly important as most OECD countries expand and refine their pay transparency systems in the coming years.
Governments must invest in effective implementation of pay gap reporting and auditing measures – including clear communication of reporting requirements and workers’ rights, simplified reporting systems that reduce administrative burden, and adequate monitoring and enforcement of firms’ compliance. Use of digital tools and administrative data offer particularly promising avenues to reduce administrative burden, improve oversight, and enhance transparency (discussed in Section 3.7). Governments should also pay attention to ensuring adequate coverage of firms and workers; requiring sufficient depth and disaggregation of pay information to enable identification of pay gaps for equal work and work of equal value; mandating meaningful transparency; establishing balanced and effective oversight; and requiring remedial action for unjustified pay gaps. The OECD’s “Checklist for implementing and reforming pay gap reporting systems” continues to offer valuable guidance for countries interested in implementing, reforming or monitoring gender pay gap reporting measures – See Chapter 1 in OECD (2023[4]).
In addition to pay transparency tools, raising awareness of the importance of tackling gender gaps is essential to build social pressure and support for action. Transparency alone is insufficient to close pay gaps; these measures must be part of a comprehensive policy package addressing inequities and their drivers, including through care infrastructure, equitable family leave policies, anti-discrimination enforcement, and efforts to challenge gender norms and occupational segregation.
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[37] STATEC (2025), Panorama sur le monde du travail luxembourgeois à l’occasion du 1er mai [Panorama of the Luxembourg labor market on the occasion of May 1st], Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg.
[36] STATEC (2024), L’écart salarial à l’avantage des femmes, mais des disparités persistent [The pay gap favors women, but disparities persist], Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, https://statistiques.public.lu/dam-assets/actualite/2024/stn8-gpg/stn8-gpg.pdf.
[24] Swedish National Audit Office (2019), The Discrimination Act’s equal pay survey requirement – a blunt instrument for reducing the gender pay gap, https://www.riksrevisionen.se/en/auditreports/audit-reports/2019/the-discrimination-acts-equal-pay-survey-requirement---a-bluntinstrument-for-reducing-the-gender-pay-gap.html.
[13] Utredningen om genomförande av lönetransparensdirektivet (2024), Genomförande av lönetransparensdirektivet [Implementation of the Pay Transparency Directive], Regeringskansliet, https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/23c9dac352834019998a08b31c8c1b94/sou-2024_40_inlaga_pdf-a.pdf.
[31] Vaccaro, G., G. Wydra-Somaggio and P. Homrighausen (2024), “Effectiveness of the German pay transparency law and the gender pay gap”, German Journal of Human Resource Management: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung, Vol. 39/3, https://doi.org/10.1177/23970022241280877.
[8] Workplace Gender Equality Agency (2025), Evaluation of reforms to the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012: Baseline report, Australian Government, https://www.wgea.gov.au/about/governance/evaluation.
← 1. Luxembourg presents a unique case with a negative pay gap when measured by average hourly earnings, where women earn more per hour than men. This can be explained by women’s higher average educational attainment, their strong representation in high-paying sectors, and their concentration in middle and upper-middle salary categories (STATEC, 2024[36]). However, this advantage masks important disparities: when annual earnings are considered, the pay gap favours men due to substantially higher bonuses concentrated among a small percentage of male employees, and women’s significantly higher rates of part-time employment result in lower actual annual earnings (STATEC, 2024[36]). Additionally, despite higher median wages, women remain overrepresented among low-wage workers while men dominate the very highest salary levels STATEC (2024[36]; 2025[37]).
← 2. When asked to identify priority issues in gender equality from a list of topics based on the OECD Recommendation on Gender Equality in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship, “women being paid less than men for the same work” was reported as a top-three priority by countries in 2016, 2021 and 2024 (OECD, 2025[2]; OECD, 2023[38]).
← 3. In the 2025 OECD Pay Transparency Questionnaire, countries were asked to indicate any changes to the information they provided in relation to national-level pay gap reporting and pay auditing measures in 2022, and to indicate any plans to amend (any) pay transparency measures in the coming years (including, for EU member countries, specifically to implement the EU Pay Transparency Directive). References to “recent changes” here therefore refer to any changes in pay gap reporting, pay auditing requirements or other pay transparency tools or systems in the period between 2022 and July/August 2025. References to “planned changes” relate to reported plans to amend (any) pay transparency measures in the coming years.
← 4. Ibid.
← 5. As of July/August 2025, discussions on transposition of the Pay Transparency Directive were ongoing in some countries, limiting full assessment of the nature and extent of forthcoming changes (OECD 2025 Pay Transparency Questionnaire). Yet, it is already clear from the requirements of the Directive, and from early indications from countries, that significant changes to pay transparency systems can be expected.
← 6. For more information see https://www.stjornarradid.is/efst-a-baugi/frettir/stok-frett/2025/11/21/Frumvarp-um-skyrslugjof-i-stad-jafnlaunavottunar-afgreitt-ur-rikisstjorn and https://www.althingi.is/altext/raeda/157/rad20260115T110926.html.
← 7. The Employment Rights Bill, in its final stages as of November 2025, amends the Equality Act to enable obligations to be imposed on employers in relation to equality action plans, and provides that regulations may also require employers to publish prescribed information relating to the plan. The requirement would not become mandatory until secondary legislation is passed and becomes effective.
← 8. In the context of public procurement and subsidies, Switzerland has a monitoring system operating across multiple federal levels, supported by the Swiss Office for Gender Equality (EBG) who plays a central role in harmonising the methodology. At the federal level, EBG conducts approximately 30 annual pay equity audits of companies receiving federal public contracts, with sanctions including exclusion from future contracts possible in cases of non-compliance. Under the Charter on Pay Equity in the Public Sector – signed by 17 cantons, over 100 municipalities, and over 100 quasi-public enterprises – cantonal and municipal authorities are also conducting pay equity inspections in the areas of procurement and/or subsidies, with activity at the cantonal and municipal levels now exceeding 100 audits per year and expanding further (300 audits at all federal levels according to a 2023 study commissioned by the Swiss Office for Gender Equality). What remains lacking is general enforcement of the Gender Equality Act analysis requirement for private sector companies outside the procurement and subsidies context.
← 9. The absence of general sanctions in Switzerland’s Gender Equality Act is reported to have been a political compromise during the 2018 legislative revision. The law includes a sunset clause expiring 1 July 2032 and a built-in evaluation requirement. Given unsatisfactory compliance results, the Federal Council has brought forward its impact evaluation from 2029 to 2027.