The Berlin Metro announced: When men earn 21% more, women's tickets will of course be discounted by 79%

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Women earn 21% less than men German Metro announces: Women get 21% off when buying tickets

At this year's International Women's Day parade, a German woman held a sign that read, "Thank you for Women's Day, but when will we be paid equally? （Thanks for the day. Now how about equal pay?) Faced with a 21% pay gap between men and women in Germany, her anger comes from there.

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March 18 this year is the day of equal pay for equal work in Germany.

The Berlin Public Transport Company (BVG) announced that it will sell a limited number of women's tickets (Frauenticket) on the same day, which will only be available for women. The discount is 21% of the salary gap between men and women. As soon as the news came out, it sparked heated discussions. According to the Guardian, the women's ticket is a one-day ticket, which was originally scheduled to be 7 euros, and women can buy it for 5.50 euros. The women's ticket is valid for the two core areas of Berlin city, with unlimited rides and is valid until 3 a.m. the next day. (Bonus screening: Icelandic women earn 14% less than men, so they decide to leave work 14% early)

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Is the subway discount for women's tickets a feminist buffet?

Such equal pay offers have also attracted negative comments. Some people think that this is nothing more than a commercial work of corporate branding. Some netizens also sarcastically said that this is a kind of "feminist buffet" that only benefits women: "Then should women get off the bus 5 stops early, anyway, their average life expectancy is five years longer?"

The women's vote was not listed, and BVG spokesperson Petra Nelken responded directly:

Of course, just looking at the price difference will make people feel unfair, but this is the point: we only have such a day in the whole year, using the fare difference to make the huge salary difference concrete. But this is the reality that women face every day. （Of course this price gap feels unfair. But that’s the whole point: just for a day we just wanted to make the big pay gap feel tangible in ticket form. This is what women are up against every day.）

Why is Equal Pay Day different every year?

You may not know that this year's Equal Pay Day in Germany is located on March 18. Taiwan's Equal Pay Day falls on February 23 this year. Why are equal pay days different in countries around the world?

In fact, governments calculate the percentage of wage gap based on the average hourly wage of male and female workers every year, and convert it into "how many days of overtime do women need to work" in order to be "paid the same as men", and the date is calculated. Therefore, the Equal Pay Day in various countries fluctuates every year. (Additional screening at the same venue: [Gallery]#equalpay Otherwise, I'll bah, equal pay for equal work 3+1 action)

The day before yesterday (14th), our country's Ministry of Labor released data confirming that this year's equal pay for equal work will set on February 23. However, interestingly, according to the "Liberty Times": "The Statistics Department of the Ministry of Labor retroactively revised the data, changing the data from last year and the year before to 54 days, emphasizing that the days of equal pay for men and women are the same in these three years."

In other words, Taiwan has not changed the gender pay gap for three consecutive years, still remaining at 14.6%.

Equal pay for equal work = equality in the workplace?

Compared with Germany, Taiwan's situation does not seem to be significantly better. What about other countries?

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according toEurostat (Eurostat) dataGermany ranks third from the bottom in the EU in terms of equal pay for men and women, only better than the Czech Republic and Estonia. The best performers were Italy, Luxembourg, Romania and other countries, all of which were less than 5%. Interestingly, however, a lower percentage of the gender pay gap does not necessarily mean that the country has more equality in the workplace. EU analysis points out that small and large gaps may reflect different women's workplace difficulties.

Countries with small wage gaps may indeed be motivated by gender equality in the workplace, but in some cases, it may represent an overall decline in women's employment. For example, Italy (<5%), despite the beautiful book figures, is actually because Italy's overall female employment rate is lower than that of other countries. It is more difficult for women to even be hired. In other words, most of the women who can remain in the workplace are in mid- to high-level positions, while low-level female workers may not even be able to find a job directly, so it will not be reflected in the wage gap.

Countries with high wage gaps reflect a strong gender differentiation in the labor market. Women tend to be more constrained in their job search options than men. They are only encouraged to work in specific roles or industries (e.g., Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland) or women can only work part-time (e.g., Germany, Austria).Deutsche Welletidy upIn 2017, there were more than 10 million part-time workers in Germany, of which only 9% of men were part-time workers and as many as 47% of women had part-time jobs. Whatever the reasons that force women to work part-time, they receive only a smaller salary.

Celebrate Women's Day, give me money too

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Seeing Germany, seeing the world, and then looking back at Taiwan, which has not grown for three consecutive years.

Regardless of whether the Berlin Metro's women's vote policy is really playing a "business game", we see that when governments implement equal pay policies for equal work, the results are still almost non-existent, as long as companies are willing to pay attention to salary issues, it is a good result.

Taiwan should also join the ranks of hands-on change. Caring about equal pay for equal work should not be a one-day celebration. And what can we change as readers? Perhaps, it starts with a gender-equal workplace. (You may like: How to improve sexism between D&I strategies?) 8+6 exercises to help accelerate workplace equality)