Non-decision making in the reform of equal pay policy: The case of Finnish gender equality legislation

The purpose of this paper is to analyse an example of non-decision making in the Nordic tripartite policy process, namely, the reform of the Finnish gender equality legislation and the law for equal pay comparisons.

The paper uses non-decision making as a conceptual framework for qualitative analysis of the documentation of the working group that drafted the law for equal pay comparisons. The analysis focuses on the strategic responses used by the participants in order to defend the status quo and resist change in legislation.

The key findings are that the suggested law for conducting equal pay comparisons as part of gender equality planning in Finnish organisations changed dramatically in the tripartite policy process. Employer organisations successfully prevented the most relevant features from being implemented in the reformed law.

The findings of this research indicate that there is a need for more research on the tripartite policy process and its implication on developing policy.

This paper shows what kind of power employer and employee organisations use in Finnish policy making. As a result, the reformed gender equality legislation is a compromise reflecting the vested interests of different stakeholders. The findings highlight the challenges of developing policy in tripartite policy process.

The tripartite policy process and its implications have rarely been studied. The value of this paper lies in both originality of the topic and approach, and the societal importance of the findings.