Equal pay in practice: Insights from Lithuania's experience

Lithuania has had to translate the principle of equal pay for work of equal value into national law and practice. From your experience, what were the most important lessons for making ILO Convention No. 100 on Equal Remuneration effective in practice?

Lithuania’s experience must be understood in its post-Soviet context. Under the Soviet system, equality was officially proclaimed to have been achieved, so discrimination was rarely recognized as a social problem. As a result, awareness of pay discrimination remained limited, and unequal treatment was seldom questioned.

A second challenge emerged during the transition to a market economy. The Soviet system’s standardized and transparent wage structures were dismantled in favour of market-based wage setting. Individualized pay became associated with employers’ managerial freedom. Consequently, remuneration differences are still often viewed as a legitimate employer prerogative rather than questioned as possible discrimination.

This highlighted an important lesson: legal recognition of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value is not enough. While the principle has existed for decades, practical methodologies for assessing and comparing the value of different jobs remain underdeveloped. Employees, employers, trade unions and enforcement institutions need clear and practical tools to apply the principle in practice.

Transparency is equally important. In 2016, Lithuania required employers with more than 50 employees to establish remuneration systems, bringing greater structure and consistency to wage-setting. Company-level average wage information also became publicly available through the state social insurance system. However, pay confidentiality culture and employees’ reluctance to discuss remuneration continue to limit transparency.

Finally, enforcement cannot depend solely on individual litigation. Employees are often reluctant to challenge pay discrimination because they fear damaging the employment relationship or losing their job. Trade unions and NGOs have not made strategic equal pay litigation a major priority either.

The Lithuanian lesson is that equal pay requires more than legal rights. Effective implementation depends on gender-neutral job evaluation, institutionalized pay transparency and collective mechanisms capable of challenging inequality without placing all the risk on individual employees.

How important are social dialogue and collective bargaining in turning equal pay rules into workplace practice?

Lithuania’s experience shows that social dialogue and collective bargaining alone do not guarantee progress on equal pay. As in many Central and Eastern European countries, in the transition to a market economy, social partners were largely focused on building bargaining institutions and capacity. Consequently, collective agreements often contained general, gender-neutral pay provisions rather than specifically addressing pay inequality.

Nevertheless, stronger collective regulation creates important conditions for equal treatment. Collective agreements and formal pay systems introduce greater transparency, predictability and consistency into wage-setting and reduce individual and discretionary pay decisions.

The Lithuanian government has increasingly used collective bargaining to regulate public sector pay. In education and healthcare, sectoral collective agreements have introduced pay scales, coefficients and more transparent remuneration formulas. This is significant progress, although these are not necessarily the sectors with the largest gender pay gaps.

The greater challenge is the private sector, where unionization and collective bargaining remain much weaker, including in sectors with substantial gender pay gaps. Change is also emerging outside traditional collective bargaining. Foreign-owned companies and employers competing for skilled workers increasingly present equal opportunities, inclusion, transparent career development and fair remuneration as good employment practice.

What should policymakers, and employers’ and workers’ organizations prioritize so that the Pay Transparency Directive and wider equality framework deliver measurable progress, rather than formal compliance?

The Lithuanian experience suggests that good legislation, a functioning equality body and legal remedies do not necessarily produce substantial progress on equal pay. The problem is not only enforcement capacity, but also who is expected to activate the system.

Individual enforcement has clear limits. Employees are often reluctant to challenge their employer over pay issues while still employed. Even where the burden of proof is shifted and procedures are accessible, a claim may be seen as putting one’s employment relationship or career at risk. A system dependent on individual complaints will therefore leave significant pay discrimination unchallenged.

There is also a problem of institutional priorities. Equality bodies with limited resources deal with many grounds of discrimination. Systemic gender inequalities in remuneration may compete with individual complaints, and gender becomes only one protected ground among many rather than a structural labour market issue requiring sustained attention.

The EU Pay Transparency Directive may change this dynamic. Pay information rights and limits on pay secrecy make inequalities more visible. More importantly, job evaluation, pay gap reporting and workers’ representatives can move the issue from individual litigation into the workplace and collective bargaining agenda.

However, implementation may be difficult in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Where employee participation, collective bargaining coverage and social dialogue are weaker, new information and consultation rights do not automatically create actors capable of using them effectively. Transparency may reveal inequalities without generating sufficient pressure to correct them.

For this reason, I would place greater emphasis on genuine gender mainstreaming. Pay inequality should be considered when governments decide on taxation, family policy, parental leave, social security and labour market regulation. Policymakers should ask whether measures will affect women’s lifetime earnings, reinforce occupational segregation or care stereotypes, or contribute to the gender pension gap and poverty in old age.

Finally, stronger involvement of trade unions and NGOs is needed. Trade unions can bring strategic cases that individual employees are unwilling to pursue, publicize successful cases and turn abstract equality rules into visible examples of unfair pay practices.

The key question is not whether the Directive is correctly transposed. It is who will use the new transparency, who will convert information into pressure for change, and who will act when individual workers cannot or will not do so themselves.