Bonum Certa Men Certa

What the Hard Data Says About Gender Inequality in Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the EPO

EU, EPO staff, and EPO management
The EU's unwillingness to do something about the EPO will imperil the EU itself (the EU and EPO are very much connected through the illegal Unified Patent Court)



Summary: Gender inequality, or the considerably lower probability of women progressing at Europe's largest patent office, as explained by the EPO's elected staff representation only days ago

The Central Staff Committee at the EPO started talking about the empty words from António Campinos regarding inclusion, equality etc. Campinos is basically a low-grade liar. He last brought that up just weeks ago in a pre-recorded speech.



"Under the current career system," the Central Staff Committee says, "the gender pay gap has widened after every reward exercise. Progress has been made to fix the huge under rewarding of colleagues on maternity leave, but there is still much work to do in other areas. In particular, three issues are highlighted, including the under-rewarding of double-steps and promotions to women, and the under-rewarding of colleagues working part-time."

The paper below is dated 5 days ago. Originally a PDF circulated among stuff, here it is as HTML:

Zentraler Personalausschuss Central Staff Committee Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich, 07/04/2023 sc23040cp

Gender Pay Gap: at last a fair reward exercise in 2023?



Dear colleagues,

Under the current career system, the gender pay gap has widened after every reward exercise. Progress has been made to fix the huge under rewarding of colleagues on maternity leave, but there is still much work to do regarding other minority groups, such as part-time workers and women, as detailed below.

The President's Instructions on Rewards confirm the reality of this trend with his recommendation to managers that states “as a proactive measure in order to ensure a fair distribution of rewards to all categories of staff, (...) to pay specific attention to part-timers and colleagues on maternity leave.”

In recent years the administration has relentlessly affirmed its will to tackle the issue of gender inequality, but progress has been slow. The gender pay gap remains a stubborn problem and last year’s reward exercise was not an exception. While women and men were rewarded a single step at a reasonably equal rate, the gender differences in the reward of double steps and promotions, as seen below, remains an issue practically unaddressed with the gaps showing no signs of closing. As an example, for these gaps to close in the last reward exercise, an additional 41 women would have been awarded a double step, and 34 more women would have been promoted.

Men and women at EPO



Another issue that impacts women more strongly than men is the under-rewarding of colleagues who work part-time. The difference between rewards for part-time colleagues and full-time colleagues is quite large (as can be seen below), and because a significantly larger percentage of our female colleagues work part-time when compared to the men as the pie charts show, the under-rewarding of part-time staff disproportionately impacts the women. This is another area where there is still work to be done.

EPO pensionable award



These three areas for improvement were presented in a recent diversity and inclusion working group meeting with VP1, who made a commitment to look into these specific issues during the reward harmonisation process. We also reiterated our request for an updated gender awareness report including an analysis of the career opportunities for women.

This year, Staff representation expects not to see another reward exercise that disadvantages our female colleagues. In 2023, we hope that our management takes bigger strides towards equality to demonstrate the true political determination this issue demands and deserves. Close the gender pay gap and empower women in our workplace.

Your Central Staff Committee


The management at the helm quit caring about facts; instead it is "doping" on stakeholders' money (application fees, renewal fees, searches etc.) and bribing the European media to relay a false narrative/image of the EPO. Sometimes that money even bribes international media and scholars outside Europe.

Rules, Immunity, EPO management, Rules, impunity

Recent Techrights' Posts

Topics We Lacked Time to Cover
Due to a Microsoft event (an annual malware fest for lobbying and marketing purposes) there was also a lot of Microsoft propaganda
 
Links 23/11/2024: "Real World" Cracked and UK Online Safety Act is Law
Links for the day
Links 23/11/2024: Celebrating Proprietary Bluesky (False Choice, Same Issues) and Software Patents Squashed
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, November 22, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, November 22, 2024
Gemini Links 23/11/2024: 150 Day Streak in Duolingo and ICBMs
Links for the day
Links 22/11/2024: Dynamic Pricing Practice and Monopoly Abuses
Links for the day
Microsofters Try to Defund the Free Software Foundation (by Attacking Its Founder This Week) and They Tell People to Instead Give Money to Microsoft Front Groups
Microsoft people try to outspend their critics and harass them
[Meme] EPO for the Kids' Future (or Lack of It)
Patents can last two decades and grow with (or catch up with) the kids
EPO Education: Workers Resort to Legal Actions (Many Cases) Against the Administration
At the moment the casualties of EPO corruption include the EPO's own staff
Gemini Links 22/11/2024: ChromeOS, Search Engines, Regular Expressions
Links for the day
This Month is the 11th Month of This Year With Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (So Far It's Happening Every Month This Year, More Announced Hours Ago)
Now they even admit it
Links 22/11/2024: Software Patents Squashed, Russia Starts Using ICBMs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 21, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, November 21, 2024
Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024