Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2010, published 100th ILC session (2011)

Other measures to promote the principle of the Convention. The Committee notes the Government’s explanations that actual wage differences between men and women are due to the fact that women use their right to work part time in order to give more time to family responsibilities and childcare, and to the fact that they are not engaged in jobs involving harmful and strenuous working conditions (e.g. underground work), for which an increased wage is foreseen. The Committee recalls that household and family responsibilities being primarily borne by women contributes to women often entering into jobs and occupations, including part-time work, which have fewer career prospects and are lower paid. The Committee notes that Ukraine has ratified the Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention, 1981 (No. 156), and that the Law on Ensuring Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities of Women and Men, 2006, makes the ensuring of equal opportunities for men and women in respect of combining work and family responsibilities an explicit objective of state policy on gender equality (section 3). With respect to the prohibition of women in jobs involving harmful and strenuous work, it should be recalled that protective measures that exclude women from certain types of employment and occupation may be contrary to the principle of equality and contribute to gender differences in remuneration, if they are not strictly justified by the need to protect maternity and if they are based on gender‑biased views on the type of jobs women should perform. The Committee refers in this regard to its comments on the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111). The Committee asks the Government to indicate the practical measures taken to assist women in better harmonizing work and family responsibilities, and to promote a better sharing of family responsibilities between women and men, so as to enable women to enter into better paid occupations. The Committee further asks the Government to undertake an in‑depth analysis of the nature and extent as well as the specific causes leading to gender differences in remuneration in the private and public sectors, and to report on the results achieved.