In recent decades, women have experienced notable improvements in the labor market, especially in terms of activity and employment levels. However, equal pay, defined as "equal pay for work of equal value or equivalent," remains an pending challenge in all professional categories, including management positions, where, in addition, the weight of women remains at very low levels, around 30% of the total employees at this occupational level.
According to the Annual Wage Structure Survey (EAES), the average salary of women holding a management position in 2015 (most recent data) was, rounded, 45,000, compared to 55,000 euros for men employed in the same occupational category. That is, women in a management position earned 18.8% less than men in the same position or, in other words, the average annual female salary represented 81.2% of the male salary. As a positive note, it is worth noting that the gender pay gap in this occupational group, although high, was lower (4.1 percentage points) than the gap for the national total of all occupations, which for that year stood at 22.9%.
The gap is larger in annual bonuses
Looking at the composition of remunerations, the data seems to indicate that the main differences come from annual bonuses. Thus, in the euro area, the gap related to this concept is higher than when only salary remuneration is considered, reaching 82.6% in larger companies (1,000 employees or more). The exception would be in medium-sized companies, where the gap in annual bonuses is smaller and even negative (women's bonuses would be higher than men's).
The analysis for Spain is more limited due to the lack of data for larger companies. However, as far as the data allows, the gap is also larger in annual bonuses than in salary remunerations, especially in companies with between 50 and 249 employees, where it reaches 36.7% (10 percentage points higher than the gap in salary remunerations). As in the euro area, medium-sized companies (250-499 employees) show lower remuneration differences, with the one related to bonuses even being lower than the salary one (Table 2).
The wage gap between female and male executives decreased during the crisis period (5.2 pp)
In recent years, corresponding to the economic and financial crisis, the wage gap among the group of executives decreased by 5.2 percentage points. This data, while positive, needs to be qualified. And it is that, according to the evolution of the wage gap, this period must be subdivided into two. In the first, referring to the most intense years of the crisis (2008-2012), the gap narrowed (by up to 8.3 percentage points, compared to an increase in other occupations) as a result of a decrease in men's earnings and a slight increase in women's. In the second, corresponding to the period of the beginning of economic recovery (2013-2015), however, the gap increased again due to an inverse evolution of wages: men's wages increased while women's decreased (Graph 2).
Men's wages, therefore, showed procyclical behavior (they evolved in the same direction as the economic cycle): they were more sensitive to the economic crisis but also more sensitive to recovery, probably via a decrease/increase in annual bonuses, given that it is in that part of the remuneration where the greatest differences are found. Female wages, on the other hand, showed countercyclical behavior. Given this trend, it is very likely that the data for subsequent years, once published by the INE, will show an increase in the gap in this occupational group.
Catalonia is the fourth autonomous community with the largest wage gap
The data by autonomous communities does not allow for a very refined analysis in this matter, since the EAES only disaggregates occupational categories into three large groups ("High", "Medium" and "Low"). However, it is interesting to note that the wage gap in the "High" occupational category, which would include the category of executives and managers, shows that there are notable differences between autonomous communities. The wage gap in the Canary Islands was barely 4.6, compared to 26.2 in Cantabria. Even so, in general terms, the gap in this professional category is usually lower than the average of all occupations for each community and, with few exceptions, has reduced or remained stable in recent years.
In relation to Catalonia, it should be noted that it is the fourth autonomous community with the highest wage gap at the "High" occupational level (21 in 2015). At the beginning of the crisis, this gap was slightly larger (21.6), although it occupied the sixth position. Thus, although the gap in this community has decreased during the course of the crisis, similarly to the gap in all occupations, it has done so to a lesser extent than in other communities, which places it among the highest levels.