Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2022, published 111st ILC session (2023)

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

The Committee notes the observations of the Cameroon Workers’ Trade Union Confederation (CSTC), received on 31 August 2022.

Articles 1 to 4 of the Convention. Gender pay gap. Statistics. The Committee notes that: (1) the Government indicates that it has taken measures to allow statistics to be gathered, including the creation of statistics units in all ministerial departments; and (2) it commits to providing, in its next reports, the statistics gathered and analysed during implementation of the National Gender Policy. The Committee therefore encourages the Government to intensify its efforts in gathering and analysing statistics on the remuneration of men and women, in the public and private sectors, disaggregated by occupational category. It also asks the Government to provide statistics compiled during the implementation of the National Gender Policy on:

• (i)the distribution of men and women in the different occupational categories;
• (ii)their respective earnings; and
• (iii)the pay gap between them.

Article 2. Application of the principle of equal remuneration in practice. Combating professional segregation between men and women. Pay transparency. The Committee notes that the Government indicates: (1) it is not aware of the existence of professional segregation; (2) the labour inspectors have not yet received training on the principle of equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value and take the existing labour legislation as their framework; and (3) no complaint has been submitted regarding a violation of the principle of the Convention. The Committee notes that the CSTC, in its observations, highlights the difficulties encountered in monitoring the application of the Convention in practice, arising from the lack of a policy of pay transparency, which allows employers to invoke the confidentiality of contracts. In this regard, the Committee recalls that the transparency of pay structures is recognized as likely to help reduce gaps and to encourage the adoption of measures aimed at allowing information on remuneration at enterprise level to be requested and obtained (see the 2012 General Survey on the fundamental Conventions, paragraphs 712 and 723). Regarding the fact that men and women are often not employed in the same occupations (occupational segregation), the Committee requests the Government to provide information on all measures taken or envisaged to combat gender stereotypes regarding the occupational aspirations and capabilities of girls and women on the one hand, and boys and men on the other, in education, career guidance and vocational training and in employment. It further requests the Government to provide information on all measures taken or envisaged to promote pay transparency, in order to combat pay gaps between men and women more effectively and promote application of the principle of the Convention.

Article 3. Objective job evaluation. The Committee notes the Government’s indication that formal job evaluation procedures are in place at enterprise level, based on skills, effort and diligence and are the same for all workers, without distinction. The Committee recalls that objective job evaluation is a formal procedure which, through analysing the content of jobs, gives a numerical value to each job. These methods analyse and classify jobs on the basis of objective criteria relating to the jobs to be compared – the skills and qualifications, effort, responsibilities and working conditions. With regard to the Government’s reply referring to “diligence” as a job evaluation criterion, the Committee observes that there appears to be a confusion between the notion of evaluating a worker’s performance – which is an operation that seeks to determine the way in which a worker carries out his or her tasks – and the notion of objective evaluation of jobs, that is, measurement of the relative value of jobs that do not have the same content, based on the tasks to be performed. The objective evaluation of jobs must evaluate the position itself, not the performance of an individual worker. In this regard, the Committee draws the Government’s attention to paragraphs 695 to 709 of its 2012 General Survey, which relate to objective job evaluation. The Committee requests the Government to take measures to:

• (i)put in place formal procedures for the objective evaluation of jobs based on objective criteria for evaluation such as skills, effort, responsibilities and working conditions; and
• (ii)ensure that the work in sectors and occupations where women are predominant is not under-valued.