The government has agreed to extend the deadline until the end of the year for companies to comply with the obligation to enter data in the Register on the wage gap between men and women. The initial deadline for submitting this new obligation and the indicators corresponding to the 2023 financial year was June 30, but the Council of Ministers has validated the extension of the period until December 31, 2024.
The Regulation of the Public Register of Data and Indicators on the Gender Professional Gap stems from Law 6/2022 for the effective application of the right to equal treatment and opportunities and non-discrimination between women and men.
Companies will therefore be able to submit the 2023 data until the end of 2024. From next year, the wage data corresponding to the previous financial year must be provided annually before March 31 of the same year.
The request for registration of data and indicators on the gender professional gap must be processed electronically through the Government’s electronic office, which is accessible with a digital certificate.
The data entered in the Register should help companies analyze their situation and reflect in their equality plans the measures to correct the detected gap. The government will process the indicators obtained through the Statistics Department, and may compare them with other states or sources, such as surveys and studies on the gap.
It should be noted that companies with more than 50 employees must provide more detailed information, while those with smaller workforces only need to keep an annual register that includes the average comparison of annual global remuneration between men and women, and the difference in remuneration by age group and professional category.
In parallel, the government has also created the Public Register of Equality Plans. In this case, as established by Article 57 of Law 6/2022, companies with 50 or more employees are required to develop their equality plans, which must have a maximum duration of 4 years, and promote the necessary measures to eliminate direct and indirect discrimination between women and men in access to employment and other working conditions, including the termination of the contract. For companies with fewer than 50 employees, equality plans are voluntary. The equality plans corresponding to the year 2023 must be registered, through the government’s electronic office using the digital certificate, from May 1, 2024, until October 1, 2024. The Department of Labor estimates that about 150 companies will be required to register their equality plans.