International Women’s Day provides a good opportunity to examine compensation practices in the Polish labour market. According to the Salary Report 2026 published by Hays Poland, women are more likely than men to report dissatisfaction with their pay and are less likely to reach the highest salary brackets. This trend applies both to professionals in general and to compensation offered at managerial and executive levels. The findings clearly show that pay equality remains a significant challenge in Poland’s labour market.
Among employees holding managerial and executive positions, 60% of women and 81% of men report monthly earnings exceeding PLN 15,000 gross. Pay disparities are also visible at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy.
In 2025, professional women slightly more often than men received salary increases. Despite this, only 35% of women declared satisfaction with their current pay—nine percentage points lower than among men. At the same time, just 31% of women believe that gender does not affect earning potential, while men are far more likely to hold this view.
Persistent gender pay gap
The gender pay gap has long remained one of the key challenges for the modern labour market. Although data from Eurostat indicate that the problem is less pronounced in Poland than in many other EU countries, unjustified pay differences still occur—and ideally should not exist at all. Research conducted by Hays Poland shows that these disparities are visible both in general salary comparisons and in compensation offered for senior leadership roles.
According to Aleksandra Tyszkiewicz, companies are becoming increasingly aware of the need to implement transparent and non-discriminatory pay policies, which is a positive signal for the future. However, an employee’s salary often still depends on their determination to negotiate and the attitude of their manager.
“Unfortunately, in many cases this works to the disadvantage of women,” Tyszkiewicz explains. “Persistent stereotypes about women in business, combined with traditional socialization experienced by many of today’s female specialists and managers, mean that negotiating attractive compensation may be more difficult for them.”
Lower pay for the same work
Data from the Hays Salary Report 2026 show that women are significantly less likely than men to reach the highest salary levels. According to survey responses, 11% of female professionals earn between PLN 15,000 and PLN 20,000 gross per month, compared with 21% of men. In the highest salary bracket—above PLN 25,000—only 4% of women reach this level, compared with 9% of men.
A similar pattern emerges when analyzing responses from people in managerial, executive, and leadership positions. Men holding these roles are more likely than women to earn more than PLN 15,000 gross per month.
“The fact that women in leadership positions earn less than men stems from several factors,” Tyszkiewicz says. “The main reason is often the lack of transparent criteria for promotions and pay increases at the highest levels. Because there are fewer such positions in organizations, the procedures defining career progression and salary growth are often less detailed—or do not exist at all. This opens the door to discretionary decision-making and, consequently, unjustified inequalities, including in compensation practices.”
Women receive raises more often—but satisfaction remains low
According to the Hays survey, 75% of women and 72% of men received salary increases in 2025, most commonly not exceeding 10%. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction with current earnings remains higher among women than among men. One explanation may be the persistence of unjustified pay differences.
In recent months, companies have increasingly reviewed their salary structures in preparation for the upcoming EU directive on pay transparency. Some organizations have already taken the first steps to identify and eliminate unjustified pay gaps between women and men performing work of equal value.
It is therefore possible that some female professionals received modest pay adjustments in 2025 to address existing disparities. However, the scale of these increases and the context in which they were granted may not have been sufficient to significantly improve satisfaction levels. The sense of fairness and recognition may still remain relatively low.
A persistent sense of inequality
This conclusion is supported by responses from participants in the Hays report “Women in the Labour Market 2025.” Only 31% of female respondents agreed with the statement that gender does not influence the likelihood of receiving fair compensation. Among men, the share was much higher at 65%.
These results suggest that many women remain aware that their final earnings may sometimes be influenced by factors unrelated to merit, such as unconscious biases among decision-makers or the absence of effective oversight mechanisms within organizations.
“In this context, positive change may come from the EU Pay Transparency Directive, which will impose new obligations on employers, including reporting gender pay gaps,” Tyszkiewicz concludes. “Regulations alone will not eliminate inequalities, but they can significantly reduce the scope for unfair practices and accelerate efforts to close the gender pay gap.”
