ABSTRACT
According to the most recent European data, the hourly wages of women industrial workers represent between 65% to 84% of the wages of their male counterparts. Denmark and Sweden are in the "lead" here (about 84%), followed by France (82%). In European countries, women are now definitely a part of the labour force -- and increasingly occupying positions requiring professional qualification previously reserved for men -- while family structures (the development of single-parent families) have changed, so there is no longer any explicit reference to a breadwinner's salary for men and a secondary salary for women. According to one European-wide study, collective agreements may in some cases freeze situations in which inequality prevails, and thus end up institutionalising discrimination. The fact is that analysis of wage differentials is a complex matter since earnings themselves are a complex variable, involving multiple issues, from economic and social to political and institutional.
