Changes from plenary report to adopted text

45. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to protect third-country migrant women, who are often employed in low-skilled, insecure and underpaid jobs in sectors such as domestic care, cleaning and catering, from discrimination and exploitation; stresses that ensuring fair wages, labour law protection and adequate social security contributions is essential to closing the gender pay and pension gaps;

46. Invites the Commission to develop EU-wide awareness and education campaigns on pay transparency, equal treatment and the available EU instruments for promoting equality in employment; stresses that informed workers and employers are key to enforcing current legislation effectively;

47. Calls on the Member States to recognise grandparental care – when grandparents regularly look after their grandchildren to enable the child’s parent(s) to enter, remain in or return to work – as being eligible for care credits, with clear eligibility and verification criteria;

48. Stresses the importance of removing practical obstacles in workplaces, including through digital accessibility, reasonable accommodation and flexible working arrangements; encourages the Member States to provide targeted incentives to employers who invest in accessibility, skills development and inclusive recruitment, while avoiding additional administrative burdens, in order to promote both equality and competitiveness in line with the principles of the social market economy;

49. Highlights the key role of social dialogue and the involvement of the social partners in designing, implementing and monitoring equality and pay strategies to help eradicate the gender pay gap; encourages the social partners to include measures to promote equal opportunities and combat harassment, pay inequality and gender biases in collective agreements, and to extend collective bargaining coverage for non-standard workers, especially in women-dominated and low-paid sectors, in line with Article 152 TFEU; calls on the Commission and the Member States to meaningfully involve the social partners in developing new policies to close the gender pay gap in the next gender equality strategy and to further support the social partners;

50. Calls on the Member States to support institution-building at local, regional and national levels to monitor the implementation and progress of national gender equality strategies; underlines, equally, the importance of actively engaging and listening to women, across a multitude of sectors and workforces, in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies aimed at closing the gender pay gap, including researching aspects that potentially impact women’s earnings and workforce participation but on which data is lacking, such as mental health, menopause or menstruation; strongly encourages the Member States to address occupational issues related to endometritis and menopause, including women’s early exit from the labour market;

51. Reiterates the need for gender mainstreaming in EU and national policies, including employment, health, disability, pensions and sport, and in policy decision-making, ensuring that equality objectives are incorporated into all stages of policy formulation and budget implementation; calls for gender mainstreaming to be strengthened within the next multiannual financial framework and for dedicated EU resources aimed at eliminating the gender pay and pension gaps, strengthening care services and infrastructure, and supporting gender-sensitive mental health services; recalls that integrating equality objectives into EU funding improves the effectiveness and transparency of public investment; highlights, in this regard, the possible role of EU funding mechanisms such as the European Social Fund Plus, the European Regional Development Fund, the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Citizens’, Equality, Rights and Values programme and Horizon Europe in providing financial support for gender-related objectives;

52. Calls for the improved collection, comparability and publication of gender-disaggregated data on gender pay and pension gaps across all sectors to better monitor progress in closing the gender pay gap, making full use of existing reporting systems and digital tools to avoid increased administrative costs for businesses; stresses that reliable and harmonised data is essential to design evidence-based policies and monitor progress toward closing gender gaps; stresses the key role of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) and Eurostat in supporting the collection of comparable and high-quality data across the EU to inform targeted policies; asks Eurostat to complement the official gender pay gap indicator with a standardised gender time gap indicator;

53. Calls for the swift transposition and implementation of the Pay Transparency Directive, and of the Gender Balance on Corporate Boards Directive, which 10 Member States have not yet transposed, and urges the Commission to ensure the robust enforcement of both directives; encourages SMEs and other non-listed companies to consider established best practice on gender balance in management; calls on the Commission to ensure that the Pay Transparency Directive, as the EU’s key piece of legislation to tackle the gender pay gap, is not included in any forthcoming omnibus simplification packages, while also preventing duplication or overlaps in relation to new non-legislative and legislative acts addressing the gender pay gap;

54. Urges the Commission and the Member States to ensure robust enforcement and, where possible, the strengthening of current EU and national legislation to guarantee equality in career development, especially after maternity leave; stresses that workers should be protected from any form of disadvantage, including demotion, extension of probation or adverse changes in working conditions attributable to taking such leave;

55. Emphasises that the administrative burden for microenterprises and SMEs could negatively affect women’s entrepreneurship, which is crucial for women’s financial independence and gender equality;

56. Invites the Member States to ensure that pay transparency rules and complaint mechanisms are both digitally and physically accessible for workers with disabilities, and that job evaluation methods are checked to prevent bias against women, especially in women-dominated jobs and among women with disabilities;

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57. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.