(Brussels) Men in Europe still earn 16% more than women for the same job – this “gender pay gap” is still present in the EU, which is why we still need to celebrate – today – Equal Pay Day. “Written in the European Treaties 60 years ago, equal pay for equal work is still not a reality”, President-elect Ursula von der Leyen wrote this morning, announcing that she “will table measures to introduce binding pay transparency measures”. Progress in this area is slow, as the data published by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) show: the slow reduction in the average pay gap over the last decade is due to the fact that although the gap is decreasing in most countries, it has actually increased by over 3% in Malta, Portugal and Slovenia since 2007 to date. The most “virtuous” country is Romania, with a pay gap of 3.5%, while the “most unfair” country to women workers is Estonia, where women earn 25.6% less compared to their male colleagues. However, EIGE explained, a low gender pay gap is not always a good sign, since it can be a “consequence of a lower participation of women in the labour market”. Another criticality in this area is the low proportion of women in managerial positions: in the first half of 2019, women accounted for only 6.9% of CEOs, 17.6% of executives, and 30.4% of non-executives.