French women face 1,000-year pay gap

WOMEN in France face a wait of more than 1,000 years before they get equal pay at current rates of change, trade unions warned yesterday.

British women will have to wait 58 years, until 2078, to close the gender pay gap. Germans must wait until the next century and 2121, 43 years after the UK.

But the pay gap is actually getting bigger in nine EU countries – Ireland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia – research by the European Trade Union Confederation has found.

Romania should be the first EU country to eliminate the gender gap, by 2022 if current trends continue. Belgium is on course to follow, with pay equality in 2028.

But the salary gap is narrowing so slowly in France, at a rate of just 0.1 per cent since 2010, that at current rates, French women will have to wait at least 1,000 years for equality.

The French pay gap was 15.6 per cent in 2010. By 2018, it was 15.5 per cent. In the UK it was 23.3 per cent in 2010 and 19.9 per cent in 2018.

Eleven EU member states are expected to close the gap before Britain, including Greece, Hungary, The Netherlands, Austria and the Scandinavian countries.