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Norwegian female business leaders earn 77 percent of male counterparts' salary: report

The Local Norway
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Norwegian female business leaders earn 77 percent of male counterparts' salary: report
File photo: Berit Roald / NTB scanpix

Female managers and executives in Norway are paid significantly less than male colleagues, according to a report by industry representative organisation Lederne.

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Association director Audun Ingvartsen said that individual wage negotiations were part of the problem.

“I think the equal pay movement is suffering because it has become more normal to negotiate wages individually. Many directors and executives are still men, and there are probably many who – consciuóusly or subconsciously – reward those that resemble themselves,” Ingvartsen said in a press statement released by the organisation.

Researcher Eivind Falkum of the Work Research Institute, (Arbeidsforskningsinstittutet, AFI) said in a press statement issued by Lederne that it was “difficult to get around gender discrimination”.

Pay figures for the employment sector as a whole are only slightly more forgiving, with women earning 88 percent of men’s wages regardless of field and position, according to the report.

Daycare and processing were the only two sectors showing a positive trend on wage equality, according to the report.

“In both of these sectors, our figures indicate that women and men are paid completely equally. The daycare sector is dominated by women, including at the management level, and it is therefore positive that equal pay is strong here,” Falkum said.

Industry is another area which has shown progress in the area, with collaboration between different parties in the sector working towards wage equality, the researcher added.

“This is a traditional sector in which there are eight to nine men for every woman at leadership level. It appears that practising cross-party collaborations can contribute to more equality between men and women,” he said.

Kari Elisabeth Kaski, party secretary with the opposition Socialist Left party (Sosialistisk Venstreparti) and candidate for Oslo in the upcoming general election, called the figures in the report an “embarrassment”.

“This statistic is an embarrassment for Norway. Gender should not be a factor in what you are paid, plain and simple. It is apparent that women’s labour is valued lower and women are not given the very top positions,” Kaski said in a second Lederne press release.

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