"Equal Pay International Coalition" (EPIC) Key Stakeholders Meeting in Berlin

The meeting hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, was organized to provide key stakeholders with the opportunity to shape EPIC’s operational and strategic directions.

News | 22 September 2017
Contact(s): epic@ilo.org
Approximately 40 persons representing governments, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and German workers’ and employers’ organizations, as well as the Nordic Council participated in the EPIC’s First Meeting of Key Stakeholders. The meeting was opened by Ms Christine Morgenstern, Federal Ministry for Family Affairs; Ms Sabine Baun, Federal Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs; Ms Annette Niederfranke, ILO Berlin; Ms Lopa Banerjee, UN Women; and Mr Willem Adema, OECD.

The meeting which was hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, was organized to provide key stakeholders with the opportunity to shape EPIC’s operational and strategic directions. The intention of the meeting was to build consensus on EPIC`s vision and guiding principles prior to its launch.

Plenary sessions were devoted to presentations on three key draft documents: (a) EPIC’s proposed vision by Manuela Tomei; (b) EPIC’s proposed operational structure by Lisa Wong; and (c) EPIC’s proposed resource mobilization options by Raphael Crowe. Three Working Group sessions were devoted to discussing the three key EPIC draft documents based on key guiding questions.

There was consensus among meeting participants that equal pay for women and men for work of equal value was central to realizing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, reducing poverty and beneficial to the economy at large. Participants agreed that progress in closing the gender pay gap had been too slow and that no single actor alone would be able to solve the complexities of equal pay for work of equal value. Efforts towards achieving SDG target 8.5 could be accelerated through leveraging expertise across a diverse range of stakeholders to bring about changes on the ground. EPIC would help realize this. Policy dialogue, advocacy, knowledge sharing, peer-reviewed research and robust data and statistics were considered priority focus areas for EPIC.