Medium and large enterprises are obliged to inform their employees about the gender pay gap, says Mihail Gabriel Ciobanu, State Secretary of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. He referred to the changes in the Labor Code in the context of equal pay, which also requires the employer to provide the employee with information on the criteria for evaluation and classification of positions, degree of responsibility, level of qualification and experience, working conditions, effort and specificity of tasks, IPN reports.

"Our approach is based on two reasons: the problem of pay inequality is structural, and employers tend to evaluate women's positions as less important. That is why we have introduced the notion of work of equal value into the law," explained State Secretary Mihail Gabriel Ciobanu.

During the public consultations on equal pay, civil society representatives emphasized the importance of education and changing mentalities in order to reduce gender pay inequalities.

The draft also includes the flexibility of maternity leave and provides for the creation of 5,000 places in crèches. A job evaluation and grading system has also been developed and an online equal pay platform has been conceptualized, which will include information for employees and employers, with a special guide to be developed for the latter.

The Vice-President of the Parliament, Doina Gherman, said that two commissions have been set up to implement the law: the Commission for the Elaboration of the Mechanism for the Implementation of the Law, for which the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection is directly responsible, and the Monitoring Commission, headed by the Platform for Gender Equality.

Although the law on equal pay was adopted by the Parliament three years ago, recent statistics show that gender pay inequality remains a current problem in Moldova. In certain sectors, such as finance and IT, the pay gap is much wider.

"We appreciate the efforts of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, especially the development of the job evaluation system. We believe that the transparency of job descriptions, reflecting tasks and responsibilities, is essential to ensure the implementation of the law," added Victor Ciobanu, representative of the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalization.

Among the proposals put forward at the hearings are providing tools that would allow employers to evaluate equal work, prohibit them from requesting salary history from candidates, create salary sanctioning mechanisms and digital software for accountants.