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Equality Bodies

Survey on Equal Pay for Men and Women in General Hospitals in the Netherlands

The Dutch Equal Treatment Commission has recently published the results of its survey on equal pay for men and women in General Hospitals in the Netherlands.


The Dutch Equal Treatment Commission’s survey, which is the first to investigate the pay differences between men and women with equivalent positions, found that the average salary of women in all five of the categories investigated was lower that that of the men and that pay differences between men and women with equivalent jobs only arise because of pay increases.

From the results of the survey the ETC concluded that:

  1. The pay differences and non-neutral differences in increases are always to the disadvantage of women and are significant in all job categories and hospitals.
  2. Between hospitals among themselves there are considerable differences in percentage comparisons for at least one non-neutral remuneration criterion and in the size of the non-neutral increase and pay differences to which this gives rise.
  3. The pay differences between equivalent jobs are mainly attributable to the neutral criterion ‘professional experience’ (44%) and the non-neutral criteria ‘pay negotiations’ (18%), ‘guaranteed salaries’ (5%) and ‘combined categories other’ (7%).
  4. Pay discrimination between equivalent jobs is mainly attributable to the non-neutral remuneration criteria ‘pay negotiations’ (48%), ‘guaranteed salaries’ (14%), ‘combined categories other’ (20%), ‘labour shortages’ (5%) and ‘seeking alignment with the last salary earned’ (4%).
  5. It is more often the case that men start on a higher salary than women (2-5.7% higher) because they have more professional experience when they start the present job. Women largely catch up on this difference because they stay in their present job for longer and the number of incremental increases they receive is consequently higher than that of men.

The survey was implemented on the initiative of the Equal Treatment Commission (ETC) as a result of the relatively high percentage of requests for opinion submitted by health sector employees to the ETC.

For more information on the survey please click here

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