Germany's Entgelttransparenzgesetz (Wage Transparency Act, 2017)

Germany's Entgelttransparenzgesetz (Wage Transparency Act), in force since 2017, gives employees at establishments with more than 200 employees a statutory right to request comparator pay information by gender for colleagues doing the same or equivalent work, and requires firms with more than 500 employees to report regularly on their equality measures.

A 2025 study by Vaccaro, Wydra-Somaggio and Homrighausen, published in the German Journal of Human Resource Management using IAB establishment-level register data, applied a difference-in-discontinuity design around the law's two legal thresholds (approximately 200 and 500 employees). It found the law reduced the raw gender wage gap only in medium-sized establishments (200-499 employees) that already had a works council and were covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

In establishments without these institutions, the study found the opposite: the unexplained gender wage gap increased after the law took effect. The authors conclude that pre-existing worker-representation structures, not the individual pay-transparency right itself, were the decisive factor in whether the law narrowed or widened the gap - a cautionary finding for jurisdictions considering similar individual-request rights without matching institutional support.

Read the full analysis: https://iab.de/en/publications/publication/?id=14244922