Lisbon, Nov. 14, 2025 (Lusa) - The Portuguese trade union confederation, CGTP, Commission for Equality between Women and Men warned on Friday that the Government's labour reform will exacerbate pay inequalities between men and women, whose base salary was 12.5% lower in 2023.
"The minister of labour and her Government are in a great hurry to change labour legislation, with a view to increasing precariousness, restricting collective bargaining and wage increases, deregulating working hours and reducing maternity rights, among other things, which would further exacerbate the pay inequalities that exist today," the Commission for Equality between Women and Men (CIMH) said in a statement released on National Equal Pay Day, which is marked on Sunday.
Citing data from the latest barometer from the Office of Strategy and Planning (GEP) of the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security for 2023, the CGTP points out that the base salary for women in Portugal was 12.5% lower than that of men (with an average difference of €161.30), which means that it is as if they worked 46 days a year without pay.
It points out that this gap increases to 15.4% when earnings are taken into account (corresponding to regular bonuses and allowances earned in addition to the base salary, as well as remuneration for overtime), with the average difference between men and women in this case being €241.60.
In this regard, the commission notes that "Portugal is behind in implementing the Pay Transparency Directive", whose transposition deadline is 7 June 2026 and which aims to “end the secrecy surrounding wages, one of the main obstacles to gender equality at work”.’
For the Commission, the way forward to end pay inequalities is to "increase wages, not only in terms of the enhancement of work, but also in terms of combating pay discrimination between women and men"; "repealing the rule on the expiry of collective agreements"; and "reintroducing the principle of more favourable treatment and to include measures to promote and safeguard equal pay, in particular by using wage increases to combat existing inequality".
The CGTP also calls for an end to direct and indirect discrimination between men and women, "in particular those affecting women with disabilities, in precarious employment, immigrants or belonging to minorities", a reduction in working hours to 35 hours per week and the regulation of bonuses (attendance, productivity and others), "so that maternity and paternity rights and family care are guaranteed, without employer penalties".
Another of the trade union's demands is that public policies for equality be implemented in schools (education for equality) and that official statistics, particularly from social security, provide information broken down by gender, in order to assess and monitor the effects of wage discrimination between women and men throughout their lives and, in particular, in old age.
Released last March, data from the latest GEP barometer (the Barometer of Remuneration Differences between Women and Men, an instrument of the Strategy and Planning Office - GEP), indicate that the wage gap between men and women narrowed in 2023, with women's basic pay being 12.5% lower than that of men, 0.7 percentage points less than in the previous year and the lowest differential since at least 2010, when the difference was 17.9% to the detriment of women.
Thus, after increasing for the first time since 2013 (although there was stabilisation in 2014 and 2015), the gender pay gap narrowed again in 2023, with women's basic monthly pay being 12.5% lower than men's.
In 2022, the difference between the basic remuneration of men and women was 13.2% to the detriment of women.
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