Your employer is obliged to treat all employees according to the same principles and not to discriminate against anyone in terms of pay on the basis of gender. According to the Pay Transparency Act, your employer must, under certain conditions, tell you which criteria and procedures are used to determine your pay and the pay for the same or equivalent work in the company. They must also tell you how high this pay is in comparison (median value of at least six people of the opposite sex).
You can submit a request if you

• an employee in the public or private sector,
• a federal civil servant or a public corporation, institution or foundation under federal supervision,
• a federal judge,
• a soldier,
• employed for the purpose of vocational training,
• employed in home office work or are treated in the same way as those so employed

are employed in this way.

It is important that your company has at least 200 employees. What exactly you can ask depends on whether or not your employer is bound by a collective agreement or applies a collective agreement.
If your employer is bound by a collective agreement or applies a collective agreement, it must specify for your activity and the comparable activity you have named:

• set out in detail the criteria and procedure for determining pay. If the respective remuneration components are regulated in the collective agreement or by law, a simplified answer is sufficient (however, the collective agreement or statutory regulation must be stated) and
• determine the amount of the average monthly gross salary and for up to two separate salary components.
• The following applies to the comparative activity: The comparative pay is calculated from all employees of the opposite sex who are in the same pay group as you). The prerequisite is that 6 or more employees of the opposite sex work in the comparator group. Otherwise, for reasons of data protection, you will not receive any information on the amount of the comparative pay.

If your employer is not bound by a collective agreement or does not apply a collective agreement, it must

• explain in detail the criteria and procedure for determining pay for your activity and for the comparative activity in question (a simplified answer is not sufficient),
• state to what extent the comparative activity is predominantly performed by one gender,
• if applicable, explain in a way that is comprehensible to you why your job and the job of the comparison group are not equivalent and refer the information to a job that you consider to be equivalent
• if 6 or more employees of the opposite sex work in the comparison group: state the level of pay as the statistical mean (median) of all employees of the opposite sex who perform the comparable activity.
• provide the answer in text form within 3 months.

In order to improve the transparency of pay structures, private employers with more than 500 employees are requested (but not obliged) to carry out company procedures to review and establish equal pay. If it has carried out such a review procedure with the involvement of the works council, your employer must inform employees of the results, for example at a works meeting or by publishing the results internally.

In addition, employers who are required to prepare a management report under the German Commercial Code and generally have more than 500 employees must prepare a report on equality and equal pay for women and men and publish it as an annex to the management report in the Federal Gazette.
If your employer violates the equal pay requirement, you can demand to be paid the same as your higher-paid colleagues with the same or comparable work. According to the general principles of civil law, the employer is obliged to pay benefits that have been withheld. If they are not prepared to do so, you can claim your entitlements in court. The information from the right to information can help you to enforce your claims.