Image source: ZIJkant
A new campaign from Belgium’s progressive women’s rights movement ZIJkant, created in collaboration with Mortierbrigade, reframes the conversation around the gender pay gap through a provocative and darkly humorous lens. Released ahead of this year’s Equal Pay Day on 12 March, the campaign highlights a stark reality: women in Belgium still earn on average 20 percent less than men.
The short film, directed by Lionel Goldstein for CZAR, follows a series of women committing increasingly absurd crimes, from casually stealing artwork to openly announcing a jewellery heist to the police. The twist arrives at the end. The only place where the gender pay gap does not exist is in prison, where wages are fixed and equal for all inmates.
This unexpected insight forms the core of the campaign message “There is no gender pay gap in prison. Let’s close it everywhere else.” By pushing its characters to extreme behaviour in pursuit of fairness, the campaign uses satire to underline how far reality still is from equality in the labour market.
Equal Pay Day itself marks the symbolic point in the year until which women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. The date shifts annually depending on the size of the pay gap. In Belgium, the figure has remained unchanged compared to last year, reinforcing the urgency of the issue.
Beyond the headline statistic, the campaign draws attention to deeper structural inequalities that shape women’s careers. Even when adjusted for working hours, a pay gap of around 7 percent persists. Factors such as part-time work, unequal distribution of care responsibilities and the so-called motherhood penalty continue to influence career progression and earnings. Women are also underrepresented in leadership roles, while sectors dominated by female workers tend to be lower paid.
The issue extends beyond salaries into broader economic inequality. Women on average receive lower pensions, fewer benefits and have less accumulated wealth. Recently retired women in Belgium receive pensions that are on average 21 percent lower than those of men. The situation is even more complex for women facing additional barriers, including those with migrant backgrounds or disabilities, who often experience compounded forms of discrimination in the labour market.
While the campaign playfully suggests prison as the only space free from pay inequality, ZIJkant is careful to underline the reality of prison conditions, including low wages and ongoing humanitarian concerns. The comparison instead points to a system where fixed remuneration removes the influence of bias, raising questions about how deeply embedded gender inequality remains in the free market.
The campaign will run across television, cinemas, digital out of home placements and on-the-ground activations, continuing ZIJkant’s long-standing approach of using creativity and humour to address systemic inequality.
