In recent years, the distinction between equality and equity has attracted growing attention in academic and policy conversations. Equality usually denotes providing the same rights, resources, or opportunities to everyone, while equity focuses on achieving fair outcomes by taking different starting points, needs, and structural barriers into account. Among the many facets of diversity – such as race, socioeconomic background, disability, sexual orientation, and age – gender equality has been the most intensively studied within academic and professional contexts, and remains a useful entry point for examining how formal measures interact with lived realities.

At the policy level, international and regional frameworks (e.g., Frauenrechtskonvention 1979; United Nations 2025 or European Commission 2025) have driven substantial progress in formal equality: higher female participation in education and the labour force, statutory protections, and transparency measures. Yet empirical reviews (e.g., OECD 2025; Eurostat 2017 or European Commission 2024) show that gaps persist in leadership representation, pay, career progression, and the unequal distribution of care work. These patterns underline, that improvements in formal rights and standardized rules do not automatically produce equitable outcomes across groups and contexts.

In Germany’s public sector, collective bargaining instruments such as TVoD (VKA 2025) (Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst, introduced 2005) and TV-L (TdL 2025, Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst der Länder, introduced 2006) have standardized pay groups, working-time rules and parental-leave arrangements.
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Conclusions
Collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) often perform well at delivering formal equality by standardising wages, hours and basic entitlements for workers who meet the same job or seniority criteria. At the same time, empirical work indicates that formally neutral rules can interact with existing differences in workforce composition and social circumstances – such as higher rates of part-time work among women, career interruptions for caregiving, or variations in age and occupational distribution — so that outcomes remain gendered in practice (e.g., Eurostat 2017; Kleven 2019 or Eurofound 2021). This tendency reflects how contractual design and broader social context jointly shape labour-market results rather than implying that collective agreements are inherently unsuited to promote fairness (e.g., Blau/Kahn 2017). Where negotiated with awareness of these dynamics, CBAs can help reduce predictable gendered effects. Examples include pro rata benefit accrual for part-time workers, re-entry and upskilling provisions after parental leave, more predictable scheduling, and measures to counter occupational segregation. Empirical evidence also suggests that extensive collective coverage can compress wage distributions and contribute to smaller gender pay gaps compared with more fragmented bargaining environments (e.g., OECD 2025). These are practical, workplace-level levers through which bargaining parties can contribute to fairer outcomes within their remit. …

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Dr. Marion Henkel is the Diversity Officer at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Research and Technology (INP) in Greifswald.

Dr. Christine Zädow Head of the Complaints Office under the German General Equal Treatment Act at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Research and Technology (INP) in Greifswald.