Wage inequality reaches critical level: women of Moldova worked 41 extra days for same income

Moldova today marks the Equal Pay Day, a symbolic moment that highlights a worrying economic reality: to get the same income earned by a man in 2025, a woman had to work an additional 41 days.

According to the annual analysis conducted by the Center Partnership for Development (CPD), wage inequality in 2025 reached its most critical level of the last decade. The data shows a gender pay gap of 16.6 per cent, which means that, on average, a woman lost 34,546 lei per year compared to a man.

After a period of relative stagnation between 2020 and 2023, the 2025 year marks an alarming reversal of the trend. The increase in inequality is driven by the growing number of women active on the labour market – especially those with young children – who accept part-time work or positions below their qualification level, in order to reconcile professional and family life. At the same time, persistent occupational segregation continues to maintain significant differences in remuneration.

“If current trends persist, the monetary gap will exceed the threshold of 50,000 lei by 2030, potentially reaching a record level of over 65,000 lei in 2033. Pay inequality is no longer just a matter of fairness, but a major economic risk that erodes families’ purchasing power,” said Natalia Covrig, Executive Director of CPD.

For her part, Gheorghina Drumea, legal adviser at CPD, underlined the need for concrete measures:

“On the coming period, the key goal is to turn the principle of equal pay into a lived guarantee, not just a declarative one. This means pay transparency from the recruitment stage, the real right of employees to request information and compare salaries without confidentiality clauses, as well as clear mechanisms for reporting, monitoring and sanctioning unjustified differences.”

The sectoral analysis reveals extreme discrepancies in areas considered strategic. In the publishing sector, the pay gap exceeds 50 per cent, which translates into an annual loss of over 300,000 lei for women. In IT and financial intermediation, although the percentage gaps are smaller, the high level of salaries makes women’s net monetary losses among the largest in the economy.

Pay inequality also has direct effects on pensions. In 2025, the gender pension gap was 16.3 per cent, equivalent to 8,746 lei less for a retired woman in a single year. In the Chisinau city, the situation is even more severe: although pensions are higher, inequality reaches 27.5 per cent, with women receiving 22,832 lei less per year than men.

Moldova must transpose Directive (EU) 2023/970 by 7 June 2026. Although national legislation already obliges employers to remedy pay differences of more than 5 per cent, CPD recommends additional measures to ensure genuine equality: pay transparency in job advertisements, elimination of salary confidentiality clauses, firm financial penalties for discrimination and the introduction of gender conditionality in public procurement.