Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2020, published 109th ILC session (2021)

Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100) - Gabon (Ratification: 1961)

Articles 1 and 2 of the Convention. Enforcement. Awareness raising and training. In reply to the Committee’s request for information on awareness-raising and training activities for workers, employers and their respective organizations, labour inspectors and magistrates to enhance their capacity to detect wage inequalities and bring an end to them, the Government indicates that: (1) for budgetary reasons, it has not been possible for a few years to hold the annual meeting of labour inspectors responsible for organizing training workshops, but that the Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP) that is currently being prepared by the ILO and the Government envisages a training component for the first quarter of 2020; (2) labour inspectors are not adequately trained on the Convention and awareness-raising seminars are planned to train them in this area; and (3) in practice, no complaint concerning wage discrimination has been made to either labour inspectors or the courts, and the only cases of disputes have been related to complaints of pay below the minimum wage. Recalling that the absence of complaints does not mean that discrimination does not exist, the Committee requests the Government to provide information on any measures taken, within the framework of the training component of the DWCP or in any other context, to train and raise the awareness of workers and employers concerning their respective rights and obligations in relation to equal remuneration and to improve the training of labour inspectors and magistrates so that they can deal with cases of wage discrimination, either on the basis of complaints made by workers or the findings of labour inspectors during enterprise inspections. Noting that the only complaints relating to wages concern the non-payment of the minimum wage, the Committee requests the Government to indicate the gender of the workers who lodged the complaints and to continue providing information disaggregated by sex on any cases of wage discrimination examined and dealt with by the labour inspection services or the courts.

Statistics. The Committee recalls that, following the creation of the National Agency of Statistics and Demographic, Economic and Social Studies (ANSEDES) in 2015, it expressed the hope that it would receive data on the earnings of men and women by sector of activity, occupation and level of employment in the public and private sectors. It notes that the Government has confined itself to referring once again to the role and objectives of the ANSEDES, without providing the requested statistical data. The Committee wishes to recall the importance of the availability of statistics to allow the analysis of the jobs occupied by men and women and their respective remuneration as the occupational segregation of men and women is one of the deep-rooted causes of pay gaps between men and women workers. In this regard, it draws the Government’s attention to its general observation on the Convention published in 1999, in which it provides specific guidance on the type of statistics, disaggregated by gender, that should be provided as a basis for the evaluation of the level of occupational segregation. The Committee requests the Government to provide the statistical data compiled by the ANSEDES since 2015 on the labour market participation rate of men and women, by sector of activity and occupation, in the public and private sectors, and their respective remuneration or, if such data is not yet available, to provide any available information and to continue working on the compilation of full statistical information.