The Promises and Pitfalls of Gender Equality through Coordinated Bargaining: Gendered “wage norms” in Norway and Belgium

Abstract

Collective bargaining between trade unions and employers’ organisations plays a crucial role in reducing gender inequalities and fostering inclusive labour markets. Yet, the equalising role of national collective bargaining institutions has been under the strain of rising market competition since the introduction of the European Monetary Union (EMU). To address the consequences of European market integration on gender equality bargaining, this paper investigates how transnational labour market integration has impacted the revaluation of women’s wages in the European coordinated market economies since European monetary integration. Theoretically, we draw on feminist social reproduction theory to understand the (re)production of gendered wage disparities in the context of institutionalised wage bargaining between labour and capital. We add the theoretical insights of critical political economy to interpret the impact of European transnational employment relations on the evolution of the gender pay gap. Empirically, we conduct a multilevel analysis of intersectoral and sectoral collective bargaining in Germany, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium based on a corpus of qualitative and quantitative data covering the period from 1999 to date. The qualitative data includes collective (wage) agreements, European and national policy documents, and semi-structured expert interviews with representatives of trade unions, employers and other actors involved in collective bargaining. The quantitative data include statistics on the overall and sectoral gender pay gap, sex-disaggregated labour market indicators (unemployment, labour force, activity rate,…), employment relations (collective bargaining coverage, trade union affiliation,…), and macro-economic indicators (GDP growth, public debt, employment,…). The paper will contribute to the debate on collective bargaining institutions and the gender pay gap by showing how European market integration and the transnationalisation of wage determination impact the possibility of revaluing women’s wages along socio-economic lines.