Malta has one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the EU, at just six per cent.

The island managed to narrow the difference between the average salaries of men and women by 3.2 per cent between 2008 and 2011, making better progress than the EU as a whole, with just 1.1 per cent.

The statistics, published by the European Commission yesterday, refer to hourly earnings and put Malta’s gender pay gap at the third lowest in the EU.

On average, men in the EU earned 16.2 per cent more than women in 2011 – exactly the same as in 2010.

The gap is as high as 27.3 per cent in Estonia and as low as 2.3 per cent in Slovenia.

Only Poland and the Czech Republic managed to reduce the pay gap by a higher percentage than Malta between 2008 and 2011, at 6.9 and 5.2 per cent respectively.

According to the Commission, the biggest problem in fighting the gap is the practical application of equal pay rules established by the 2006 Equality Directive and the lack of legal action brought by women to national courts.

“There is still a long way to go to reach full gender equality,” Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding admitted.

She said that to make things worse, much of the progress in reducing the pay gap “actually resulted from a decline in men’s earnings rather than an increase for women”.