Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2012, published 102nd ILC session (2013)

Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100) - Cameroon (Ratification: 1970)

Gender pay gap. The Committee notes the Government’s statement that equality of remuneration poses no problems in Cameroon. The Committee takes note of the partial statistics on women’s employment, published in March 2011 by the National Statistics Institute. The statistics show that there are still more women than men in the informal economy (90.5 per cent or 94 per cent as opposed to 87.4 per cent or 86 per cent in 2010, depending on the data), that women are more affected by unemployment and have a higher underemployment rate than men (79 per cent as opposed to 65 per cent in 2010). The data published also show that in 2001, women accounted for 31.1 per cent of staff in public enterprises and 12.6 per cent of staff in semi-public and private enterprises. With regard to the occupations for which data are available, the Committee notes that in 2008, women accounted for 20.4 per cent of lawyers, 16.6 per cent of judicial officers (as in 2000) and 35.3 per cent of notaries (as opposed to 41.9 per cent in 2000). The Committee nonetheless notes that none of the data published show the wages or income of men and women workers. So that it may determine the extent to which the Convention is applied, the Committee asks the Government to provide all available data on the distribution of men and women and their respective levels of remuneration, by sector of activity and occupational category, in the private and the public sectors. Please provide any surveys on the rates of remuneration of men and women.

Article 3 of the Convention. Job evaluation. The Committee notes the Government’s statement that there is a nomenclature of jobs for each sector of activity which the social partners take into account in classifying jobs in the course of collective bargaining. The Committee points out that often, when nomenclatures are drawn up, the jobs traditionally performed by women are undervalued in comparison with those traditionally performed by men, with the result that so-called “female” jobs are classified in lower categories and so command less pay. The Committee requests the Government to encourage the social partners to examine the job nomenclatures and classifications in the light of the principle of equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value, and through the use of objective job evaluation methods and encourages it to examine jobs in the administration in the same way.

Awareness raising. Application of the principle in practice. The Committee notes the Government’s statement that it saw no purpose in organizing awareness-raising campaigns since, in its view, equality of remuneration is not a problem in the country. Noting the Government’s statement that the law to amend the Labour Code will give full effect to the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value, the Committee encourages the Government to ensure that the training provided for labour inspectors and judges also includes capacity building for dealing with instances of inequality in remuneration, and encourages it to plan awareness-raising activities for the social partners and workers. The Government is asked to provide any extracts from inspection reports and copies of any judicial decisions that address equality of remuneration between men and women.