Directive (EU) 2023/970 and the Equality Act 2010
Work of equal value: what it means and how to show it
Two jobs can be entirely different and still be of equal value. What counts is the demands each job makes, measured on the same criteria. Women and men doing work of equal value are entitled to equal pay under EU law and in the UK. Under the EU Pay Transparency Directive, which countries had to put into national law by 7 June 2026, it also decides what workers can ask about their pay.
Auch auf Deutsch. Ook in het Nederlands.
In the EU directive
‘work of equal value’ means work that is determined to be of equal value in accordance with the non-discriminatory and objective gender-neutral criteria referred to in Article 4(4).
Directive (EU) 2023/970, Article 3(1)(g)
Article 4(4) sets those criteria. Pay structures must make it possible to assess whether workers are in a comparable situation as to the value of their work, on objective, gender-neutral criteria agreed with workers’ representatives where there are any. The criteria must not be based, directly or indirectly, on sex. They include skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, and any other factor relevant to the job, and they are applied without direct or indirect discrimination. In particular, relevant soft skills must not be undervalued.
Recital 26 adds that the four factors are weighed by the employer according to how relevant each is to the job, and that additional criteria may be used where relevant and justified. Article 4(2) requires each country to make tools or methods available for this, and Article 4(3) lets the Commission update the EU-wide guidelines, which it did with EIGE in March 2026.
Workers who do the same work or work of equal value form a category of workers (Article 3(1)(h)), grouped in a non-arbitrary way on the same criteria by the employer and, where applicable, with workers’ representatives in accordance with national law.
The comparison is not confined to one workplace at one time. It extends to a single source that sets the pay conditions, covers workers employed at different times, and where no real comparator exists, other evidence such as statistics or how a worker would be treated in a comparable situation may be used (Article 19).
What depends on it
| Article | What the categories of equal value decide |
|---|---|
| Article 7, right to information | A worker can ask in writing for their own pay level and the average pay levels, by sex, of the workers doing the same work or work of equal value, and receive them within two months. |
| Article 9(1)(g), pay reporting | Employers with 100 or more workers report the pay gap by category of workers, split into basic pay and complementary or variable pay. Workers and their representatives receive it. |
| Article 10, joint pay assessment | Where a category shows a gap of 5% or more that the employer has not justified on objective, gender-neutral criteria nor remedied within six months, it carries out a joint pay assessment with workers’ representatives, including an analysis of its job evaluation and classification systems. |
| Article 18, burden of proof | Once a worker shows facts from which discrimination may be presumed, the employer must prove there was none, and where it has not met its transparency duties under Articles 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10, the burden is on it in any case, unless the failure was manifestly unintentional and minor. |
Each country had to put the directive into national law by 7 June 2026; when the rights apply depends on that law. Where all 27 countries stand.
In the UK: the Equality Act 2010
The UK is not bound by the directive, but the Equality Act 2010 has its own three routes to equal work (section 65):
- Like work
- The same or broadly similar work, where the differences are not of practical importance (section 65(2) and (3)).
- Rated as equivalent
- A job evaluation study gives the two jobs an equal value in terms of the demands made on a worker, or would have done if it had not set different values for men and women (section 65(4) and (5)).
- Equal value
- Neither of those, but equal in terms of the demands made on the worker by reference to factors such as effort, skill and decision-making (section 65(6)).
A job evaluation study is one that evaluates the jobs of some or all of the workers in an undertaking in terms of those demands (section 80(5)). It carries weight in a tribunal: where a study has given two jobs different values, the tribunal must find they are not of equal value unless it has reasonable grounds to suspect the study discriminates because of sex or is otherwise unreliable (section 131(6)). A system discriminates if a difference, or a coincidence, between the values it sets on different demands cannot be justified regardless of the sex of the person on whom the demands are made (section 131(7)). Otherwise the tribunal may ask an independent expert to report on the question (section 131(2)).
Examples
None of these is a ruling. They show how an evaluation on the same criteria can put different jobs side by side.
| Jobs | What the evaluation found |
|---|---|
| Lead event coordinator and sous chef | In the case study of a food service company in the EU-wide guidelines, the two land in the same group, valued comparably although their departments have different functions. |
| Customer service and technical support | The guidelines’ example of indirect discrimination: customer service jobs, held mainly by women, are scored lower because the evaluation system ignores their emotional effort, multitasking and conflict resolution, while technical support jobs, held mainly by men, are credited for physical work and equipment. |
| Three jobs scoring 200, 255 and 240 | In the ILO guide’s example, two women-dominated jobs and one men-dominated job fall in the same interval of 200 to 299 points, so all three are treated as equivalent and a pay gap between them favouring the men’s job should be corrected. |
| Customer service and driver | In the tool’s synthetic sample, customer service (76% women) scores 543.6 points and driving (92% men) 510: both grade 5, one category. The full calculation. |
| Cleaner and warehouse operative | In the same sample, rating cleaning as light work puts the cleaner a grade below the warehouse operative. Scoring its physical and mental effort as for the warehouse job puts both in grade 4. The tool flags this pattern for review. |
How to show it
- List the jobs, including those held mostly by women and those held mostly by men.
- Describe what each job requires, from the work done, not from the person doing it.
- Score every job on the same factors and levels: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, split into subfactors.
- Weight the factors, with a reason that has nothing to do with who does the work, and add up the points.
- Group jobs with similar totals into grades: each grade is a category of work of equal value.
- Compare pay within each grade, and record every decision and its reason. Involve workers’ representatives where they exist.
The job evaluation tool does steps 3 to 5 with the factor plan of the EU-wide guidelines and checks the result for patterns that often signal bias. The Pay Gap Report then compares pay within each category.
Questions
Is work of equal value the same as like work?
No. Like work is the same or broadly similar work. Work of equal value covers jobs that are different but make equal demands on the worker, measured on the same criteria: skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions under the directive, and factors such as effort, skill and decision-making under the Equality Act 2010.
Can jobs in different departments be of equal value?
Yes. What counts is the value of the work, not the function. In the case study of the EU-wide guidelines, a lead event coordinator and a sous chef end up in the same group although their departments do different things. Under Article 19(1) of the directive the comparison can even reach beyond one employer, where a single source sets the pay conditions.
Is a comparator of the other sex needed?
Not always. Under Article 19(3) of the directive, where no real comparator can be found, any other evidence may be used, including statistics or a comparison of how a worker would be treated in a comparable situation. Recital 28 explains that this matters most in highly gender-segregated work.
Does a job evaluation protect an employer?
It is the employer’s main evidence. Under section 131(6) of the Equality Act 2010, where a job evaluation study has given two jobs different values, a tribunal must find that they are not of equal value unless it has reasonable grounds to suspect that the study discriminates because of sex or is otherwise unreliable. Under the directive, the burden of proof can shift to the employer (Article 18), and a documented evaluation on objective, gender-neutral criteria is how it shows its grouping of workers is sound.
Sources: Directive (EU) 2023/970, OJ L 132, 17.5.2023, Articles 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 18, 19 and 34, recitals 26 and 28; Equality Act 2010, section 65, section 80 and section 131; European Commission and EIGE, EU-wide guidelines on gender-neutral job evaluation and classification (2026), Tool 0 and case study 2; M.-T. Chicha, Promoting equity: gender-neutral job evaluation for equal pay (ILO, 2008), chapter 7. Last checked 9 October 2026. This page explains the law; it is not legal advice.