Britain is slipping behind the rest of the world for gender equality, despite protestations to the contrary.
The latest World Economic Forum rankings of gender equal societies put us us in 26th place, down from 18th a year ago. This puts us behind 14 European countries, as well as the United States, Rwanda and Nicaragua. We scored comparatively poorly in terms of pay and promotions for women, and the number of women in parliament, government and on company boards.
We are missing out on talent and denying half the population equal opportunity to contribute to the economy. Much of the work women do is poorly valued and poorly paid as many find themselves in low-paid professions such as social care and nursing. We are not a meritocratic society as we move up the career ladder – in fact, we prevent a large section of the population from competing on equal terms as they have long exited the race in the absence of encouragement and a lack of role models. All this costs the economy dear in terms of productivity and growth.
Estimates by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) suggest there are 5,400 women “missing” from top jobs in the UK. According to the EHRC report, Sex and Power 2011, since 2003 women held just 10.2% of all senior posts in business, 15.1% in media and culture, 26.2% in politics and – in what is meant to be a diversity-conscious public sector – just 26.1%. The gender gap may be narrowing in some sectors, but it is a tortuously slow process.
Why haven’t things changed? After all, professional occupations that are better paid are being increasingly penetrated by women. But the persistent wage gap shows something still isn’t working. For health professionals it remains at 15.4%. Women, who enter academia in droves, still make up only 20% of professorships and even fewer are heads of department. In law firms where women, at 62%, are a majority of those entering the legal profession, less than a third are partners.
Until age 34, the difference in average hourly pay between men and women is always below 10%. It then rockets to 30% by age 40, peaks at 45% at age 49, and has narrowed again to 28% by age 59. Even when women make it to the top they tend to earn less. CMI research in 2014 found that female managers aged over 40 earn 35% less than men of equivalent rank.
Part-time work, to which mothers often return after their children are born, tends to offer reduced access to training and career opportunities. Changes to the labour market since the financial crisis have not helped: substantial job cuts in the public sector, where women have been prevalent, mean many women have moved to private sector jobs, where the pay gap is even greater – 19.2% compared with 11% in the public sector, according to ONS statistics. Many of the new jobs created are zero–hour contracts, part-time or temporary. This is likely to be accelerated in coming years if the 2015 budget plans are implemented.
Since the start of the crisis in 2008, 826,000 women have moved into low-paid and insecure work, according to the Fawcett Society. At the same time the number of female part-time workers who would like to be working full-time has nearly doubled, to 789,000. Part-time work tends to be low-paid work: women working part-time earn 35% less per hour than those in full-time employment.
And about a third of the increase in UK employment has come from self-employment, with 371,000 women newly self-employed. Since 2008 real average earnings for the self-employed have fallen by 22% – and the gender pay gap among self-employed people could be as high as 40%.
There is a question of fairness here that needs to be kept uppermost in our minds. But from the perspective of the economy, this is a real market failure that requires government intervention if it is to be addressed.
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