As a result of legislation just passed by the Knesset, many Israeli women will for the first time receive the same salaries and benefits as their male counterparts.
The “Equal Pay for Equal Work” law mandates that men and women who work for the same employer at the same place of work are entitled to equal salaries for essentially similar or equivalent work.
The law also stipulates that men and women in comparable jobs must receive the same benefits.
According to several surveys conducted by Linda Efroni, an economist and employment expert, the salary differential between men and women in Israel has risen steadily over the years.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the salary gap in the public sector stood at 22 percent; by the end of the decade, that number had climbed to 28 percent.
In the early 1990s — the last time a survey was conducted — the gap had risen to 32 percent.
Much of the discrepancy, the surveys found, was because employers tended to give valuable benefits to male employees, but not necessarily to their female counterparts.
In Israel, it is commonplace to supplement a worker’s salary with telephone, car and clothing allowances, as well as with other benefits worth thousands of shekels.
The surveys indicated that even when women earned the same base salary as their male counterparts, they were often forced to pay for their own work clothes, gasoline and car insurance.
Praising the new legislation, Orit Sulitzeanu, spokeswoman for the Israel Women’s Network, said, “It goes a long way in redressing past discriminatory practices against women in the workplace.
“By acknowledging that benefits like telephone and car allowances constitute a component of a worker’s salary, it will help prohibit employers from favoring one employee over another.”
While the network and other organizations are hailing the law as a breakthrough for women’s rights, they are concerned about its loopholes.
Said Sulitzeanu: “It allows for too many ‘special cases’ by permitting an employer to set salaries on the basis of seniority, education and other criteria.
“Seniority can be affected when women go out on maternity leave, giving an employer an excuse to pay her an unequal salary.”
Another problem, she said, is how the workplace is defined.
“The law only applies to work within a single workplace, meaning that employees in two separate government offices, or even within two branches of one office, are not necessarily entitled to equal pay.”
Despite these potential drawbacks, “the law is quite good and we look forward to it being enforced,” Sulitzeanu said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
