Page 39 - TLU magazine - The Way to The Top

you're using your basic salary or a monthly bonus. In addition, parental benefit, unemploy- ment insurance benefit and pension all depend on income subject to social tax. At the mo- ment, the gender gap in pensions is small, but the gender inequality in retirement increases yearly as the first pillar's insurance component depends on wages and influences pensioners more and more, and today, the second pillar's payouts reflect the gender pay gap on the labour market.
The results showed that in addition to lower average hourly wages for non-Estonians the pay gap for Russian-speaking women and men is larger than for Estonians. Why?
TR: One possible explanation is language skills. If women are employed in positions requiring communication skills in the Estonian language, such as in the service sector, which has lower wages anyway, women who are less proficient in the Estonian language may be used more in as- sisting positions, with even lower salaries. Men are predominant in sectors such as manufactur- ing, logistics, where language skills have less impact on job performance.
Another explanation is the age structure and educational level of the Russian-speaking workforce participating in the labour market, different factors may accumulate. For example, Russian-speaking women find it even harder to
Marge Unt
make their education, including higher educa- tion, “earn”, than Estonian-speaking women. Here, we can already talk about intersectional inequality.
It also turned out that the pay gap is bigger the more children there are in the household. Why so?
Kadri Täht: Yes, looking at the so-called unad- justed pay gap, each subsequent minor child in the household means a larger pay gap, which
is reflected in the difference in average hourly earnings for men and women. While the aver- age hourly rate for women is virtually stagnant, the average hourly rate for men is higher for each subsequent child. Here too, an important part can be explained by the different occupa- tions of both men and women and their in- volvement in the labour market. But even if we are able to explain all this difference, it cannot be overlooked that having a child obviously af- fects men's and women's careers and choices or opportunities in the labour market differently.
In order to better explain the causes of the pay gap and thereby seek opportunities to reduce the gap, the Estonian Research Council (ETAg) and the Ministry of Social Affairs commissioned a study "Reducing the gender pay gap",
which will be carried out from 2019-2021. The study will be conducted by researchers from Tallinn University and Tallinn University of Technology and Statistics Estonia. Research is funded by the European Regional Development Fund. The budget is €615,789.
Barbi Pilvre
TALLINN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE / NO. 14 / SPRING 2020
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Photo: Piret Räni