Regulations

The world is catching up. Vareqa was built for it.

Pay transparency and pay equity law is arriving across every major employment market. This is the landscape we track, the obligations each regime places on employers, and how Vareqa helps you meet, satisfy, and stand behind them.

Book a Pay Architecture ReviewSee the Coverage Map
16
Jurisdictions tracked
25+
Obligations mapped
1
Pay architecture

The landscape

One architecture, every regime.

The detail differs by country, but the direction does not. Show the range, explain the grade, report the gap, and prove the criteria were objective. An organisation that grades its roles once, on a published methodology, can meet each of these obligations from the same foundation rather than rebuilding for every border.

The flagship regime
EU Pay Transparency Directive 2023/970/EU
The most comprehensive regime enacted to date. The 7 June 2026 transposition deadline has passed: a first group of member states has national legislation in force, and the rest are completing transposition through 2026 and 2027. It covers gender-neutral evaluation, salary ranges in postings, the employee right to information, gender pay gap reporting, and joint pay assessment. It has its own dedicated page, walked through article by article.
Open the EU Directive Page

Coverage map

Where the law stands today.

Every jurisdiction we track, grouped by region. Open any one to see the specific laws, who is in scope, the deadlines, and the Vareqa output that helps you meet each obligation.

Europe

United Kingdom
Gender pay gap reporting, with ethnicity and disability proposed
Active
View obligations
Applies to employers operating in Great Britain. Gender pay gap reporting is well established, and the framework is now being extended to ethnicity and disability.
UK Gender Pay Gap Regulations 2017
Reg. 2 to 5Annual: by 4 April
Employers with 250 or more staff report the mean and median gender pay gap, the bonus gap, and quartile pay bands each year.
Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting (proposed)
Confirmed March 2026Legislation to follow
The government confirmed in March 2026 that employers with 250 or more staff will report ethnicity pay gaps, mirroring the gender framework, through the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.
Disability Pay Gap Reporting (proposed)
Confirmed March 2026Dates to be set
Mandatory disability pay gap reporting for employers with 250 or more staff was confirmed alongside ethnicity reporting, with implementation dates still to be set.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
Ireland
Gender Pay Gap Information Act, plus EU Directive transposition
Active
View obligations
Ireland reports its gender pay gap under national law and is phasing in the EU Pay Transparency Directive, which adds salary range and right-to-information obligations.
Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021
S. 4 to 6Annual: June snapshot, report by end November
Employers with 50 or more staff publish the mean and median pay gap, the bonus gap, and part-time and temporary gaps, with an explanatory statement.
EU Pay Transparency Directive (Ireland)
Art. 5 and 7Phased transposition under way
Salary ranges in job postings and the employee right to pay information, arriving in phases after the June 2026 deadline.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit, Salary Range Publisher, and Employee Right-to-Information Report produce the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
France
Index de l’égalité professionnelle, plus EU Directive transposition
Active since 2019
View obligations
France requires employers to publish a single equality index score each year, and is still completing its transposition of the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
Index de l’égalité professionnelle
Loi Pénicaud 2019Annual: by 1 March
Employers with 50 or more staff publish an equality index score from 0 to 100 covering the pay gap, pay rises, promotions, and highest earners.
EU Pay Transparency Directive (France)
Art. 5 and 7Transposition bill in progress
Salary ranges in postings, a ban on pay history questions, and the employee right to pay information arrive when France completes transposition, which has missed the June 2026 deadline.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
Germany
Entgelttransparenzgesetz, plus EU Directive transposition
Active
View obligations
Germany already gives employees a right to comparator pay information, and has yet to transpose the EU Directive, which will add salary ranges in postings.
Entgelttransparenzgesetz (EntgTranspG)
§ 10 to 13Active: answer within 3 months
Employees at employers with 200 or more staff may request comparator pay information by sex for comparable roles.
EU Pay Transparency Directive (Germany)
Art. 5Transposition delayed, draft awaited
Salary ranges will be required in all job postings once Germany completes transposition, which has missed the June 2026 deadline.
How Vareqa helps: Employee Right-to-Information Report, and Salary Range Publisher produce the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.

Americas

United States (states)
Colorado, New York, California, Washington, Illinois, and others
Active by state
View obligations
There is no single federal pay transparency law. A growing group of states require salary ranges in postings and pay data reporting, and managing them is far simpler on one consistent grade structure.
Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act
SB 23-105Active
Salary range, benefits summary, and application deadline required in all job postings.
New York Pay Transparency Law
Labor Law § 194-bStatewide since September 2023
Salary range required for roles, internal promotions, and transfers, statewide since September 2023 and in New York City since November 2022.
California Pay Data Reporting
SB 1162Annual: second Wednesday of May
Employers with 100 or more staff report pay data by race, ethnicity, and sex to the Civil Rights Department.
Washington Equal Pay and Opportunities Act
RCW 49.58.110Active since January 2023
Salary range and benefits required in postings, with the wage scale for promotions on request.
Illinois Equal Pay Act
HB 3129Active since January 2025
Salary range required in postings, with an equal pay registration certificate for employers with 100 or more staff.
How Vareqa helps: Salary Range Publisher, and Pay Equity Audit produce the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
Canada
Federal Pay Equity Act, plus Ontario and British Columbia pay transparency
Active since 2021
View obligations
Canada combines proactive federal pay equity duties with provincial pay transparency rules, both of which rest on a documented, evaluated job architecture.
Pay Equity Act (Federal)
Part I and IIPlans in place, updates ongoing
Federally regulated employers with 10 or more staff develop and post a proactive pay equity plan, updated every 5 years.
Ontario ESA job posting rules (Working for Workers Acts)
ESA s. 8.2 to 8.5Active since January 2026
Employers with 25 or more staff include expected compensation or a range spanning no more than $50,000 in publicly advertised postings, state whether the vacancy exists, and disclose any use of AI in hiring.
British Columbia Pay Transparency Act
SBC 2023, c. 18Active since November 2023
Salary ranges required in all postings, no pay history questions, and gender pay gap reports phased in by employer size.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit, WIF Documentation, and Salary Range Publisher produce the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
Brazil
Lei da Igualdade Salarial
Active since 2024
View obligations
Brazil requires larger employers to publish pay transparency and equal pay reports on a recurring basis.
Lei da Igualdade Salarial (Law 14.611/2023)
Equal payActive since 2024
Employers with 100 or more staff publish biannual pay transparency and equal pay reports, with equal pay for equal work enforced.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.

Asia Pacific

Australia
WGEA reporting and pay secrecy provisions
Active, expanded 2024
View obligations
Australia requires annual gender equality reporting, now published at employer level, and protects employees’ right to discuss pay.
Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (amended 2023)
S. 13 to 19Annual: by 31 May
Employers with 100 or more staff submit gender equality indicators each year, now disclosed publicly at employer level.
Fair Work Act: pay secrecy provisions
S. 333B to 333EActive since December 2022
Employees have a protected right to disclose and discuss pay, and pay secrecy clauses are unenforceable.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit, and WIF Documentation produce the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
Japan
Gender pay gap disclosure, extended to mid-sized employers
Active, expanded 2026
View obligations
Japan discloses gender pay gaps under its women’s workforce participation law, and extended the obligation to mid-sized employers from April 2026.
Act on Promotion of Women’s Active Engagement
301+ staff since July 2022101+ staff from April 2026
Employers with 301 or more staff have disclosed the gender pay gap since July 2022. From April 2026 the duty extends to employers with 101 or more staff, together with the ratio of women in management, published within three months of each fiscal year end.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
South Korea
Equal Employment Opportunity Act
Active
View obligations
South Korea requires gender pay disclosure for public institutions and larger employers under its equal employment framework.
Equal Employment Opportunity Act
DisclosureActive
Gender pay disclosure obligations apply to public institutions and larger employers.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
New Zealand
Public sector reporting and a voluntary toolkit
Active
View obligations
New Zealand reports gender pay gaps across the public service and provides a voluntary toolkit for private employers, with mandatory reporting under consideration.
Gender Pay Gap Reporting
Public sectorActive
Public service gender pay gap reporting, with a voluntary toolkit for private employers and mandatory reporting under consideration.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
Singapore
SGX sustainability and fair wage guidelines
Emerging
View obligations
Singapore is moving from best practice toward firmer expectations through exchange sustainability reporting and fair wage guidance.
SGX Sustainability Reporting and MOM Fair Wage Guidelines
Practice guidanceEmerging: best practice moving to mandatory
Listed companies report workforce diversity and fair wage practices, with salary range disclosure encouraged.
How Vareqa helps: Salary Range Publisher, and Pay Equity Audit produce the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
India
SEBI sustainability reporting
Emerging
View obligations
India surfaces pay equity through sustainability reporting for the largest listed companies, phasing in over time.
SEBI Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting
BRSR Core 2023Phasing in
The top 1000 listed companies disclose gender pay ratios and diversity metrics in the sustainability report.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.

Middle East and Africa

United Arab Emirates and GCC
Equal pay for equal work
Emerging
View obligations
The UAE mandates equal remuneration for equal work, with structured reporting still developing across the region.
UAE Labour Law equal pay provision
Federal Decree-Law 33/2021, Art. 4Active since February 2022
A woman must be paid the same wage as a man for the same work or work of equal value, with Cabinet-level criteria for evaluating equal value to follow and structured reporting still developing.
How Vareqa helps: WIF Documentation, and Pay Equity Audit produce the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.
South Africa
Employment Equity Act
Active, amended 2023
View obligations
South Africa requires employers to report income differentials by race and sex and to justify disproportionate gaps.
Employment Equity Act (amended 2023)
S. 27 and S. 42Annual: by 15 January
Employers report income differentials by race and sex, and justify disproportionate gaps.
How Vareqa helps: Pay Equity Audit produces the outputs employers in this jurisdiction need to meet and stand behind these obligations.

Obligations explained

The same handful of duties, in plain terms.

Across all these regimes, the obligations fall into a small number of recurring types. Here is what each one means, and the Vareqa output that answers it.

Salary ranges in job adverts
A growing number of regimes require the pay range, or at least the starting salary, to be shown to applicants before interview, and bar questions about pay history.
Salary Range Publisher
The right to pay information
Employees can request, in writing, their pay level, the criteria behind it, and the average pay for comparable work by sex, with a defined window to respond.
Employee Right-to-Information Report
Gender pay gap reporting
Most jurisdictions require the mean and median pay gap, and often bonus and quartile data, reported on a set cycle once an employer passes a headcount threshold.
Pay Gap Calculator and Pay Equity Audit
Pay equity audit and reporting
Proactive duties require employers to test pay for unjustified differences across sex and other protected characteristics, and to act where gaps appear.
Pay Equity Audit
Gender-neutral job evaluation
Pay structures must rest on objective, gender-neutral criteria covering skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions, applied consistently across roles.
Role Evaluation
Pay-setting and progression criteria
The criteria used to set pay and to progress people must be objective and accessible to employees, so differences within a grade can be explained.
WIF Documentation
Joint pay assessment
Where an unjustified pay gap above a set threshold is found and not remedied, employers may be required to carry out a joint assessment with worker representatives.
WIF Documentation
Burden of proof and the audit trail
Where transparency duties are not met, the burden of proof can shift to the employer, which makes a complete, time-stamped record of every decision the key defence.
History

How Vareqa meets each obligation

Obligation in, output out.

Each obligation maps to a specific output in the platform. The grade is evaluated once, and every output below is built from that same foundation, so a change to a role flows through to all of them.

Obligation
Vareqa output
Salary ranges in job postings
Salary Range Publisher
Employee right to pay information
Employee Right-to-Information Report
Gender pay gap reporting
Pay Gap Calculator and Pay Equity Audit
Proactive pay equity assessment
Pay Equity Audit
Gender-neutral evaluation criteria
Role Evaluation, on the REF™ framework
Accessible pay-setting and progression criteria
WIF Documentation
Joint pay assessment on an unjustified gap
WIF Documentation
Defensible audit trail under burden-of-proof rules
History
This page is provided for general information and to help you orient your organisation. It is not legal advice, and pay transparency and pay equity law is changing quickly across every region. Confirm the position for your jurisdictions with qualified counsel. We keep this landscape current and are glad to walk through it with you in a Pay Architecture Review.

Frequently asked questions

FAQs

The questions employers ask most often when they start mapping their obligations.

It depends on where your people work and how many you employ. Most regimes set a headcount threshold and a reporting cycle. The coverage map above lets you scan every jurisdiction we track, and a Pay Architecture Review walks through the specific obligations that fall on your organisation and by when.
Pay transparency is about disclosure: showing ranges in adverts, answering employee pay questions, and publishing criteria. Pay equity is about outcome: testing whether comparable work is paid comparably and correcting unjustified gaps. Most modern regimes combine the two, and both rest on the same foundation, a consistent way of grading roles.
Where a salary range rule applies, the range is generally shown to applicants before interview, and several regimes also require it on internal promotions and transfers. The exact trigger varies by jurisdiction, which is why the range should come from your grade structure rather than a figure set advert by advert.
Under several regimes, where an employer has not met its transparency duties, the burden of proof in a pay discrimination claim shifts to the employer. In practice that makes a complete, time-stamped record of how each role was graded and each pay decision was reached the single most valuable thing to have on file.
The legal obligation always sits with the employer, not with a tool. What Vareqa does is give you the evaluated grades, the pay bands, the employee reports, and the audit trail that let you meet, satisfy, and defend those obligations with work you can show to an employee, an auditor, or a regulator.
We track these regimes closely and update as they change, but pay transparency and pay equity law is moving quickly across every region. This page is informational and is not legal advice. Confirm the position for your jurisdictions with qualified counsel, and we are glad to walk through what we hold in a review.

Get Started

Book a Pay Architecture Review.

A 30-minute conversation. Tell us where your people work and where you are today, and we will walk you through which obligations apply to you, where your current exposure sits, and what it would take to put a defensible architecture in place on your timeline.

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