Equal pay - in your dreams?

When I started secondary school, I remember coming across mathematics problems that went something like this: “The total wage bill at the Widgets Factory is £10,000 per week. Men are paid £2.00 per hour, and women are paid £1.50 per hour, for working a 40 hour week. If there are 100 men employed, how many women are employed at the factory?”As it was an all-girls’ school, we were naturally incensed that men and women should be paid at different rates for doing the same work. But that was back in the early 1970s, surely all that’s changed now…

The sad reality is that even after forty years of Equal Pay legislation, the average woman’s earnings are still more than 10% lower than those of the average man, and although the gap has narrowed over the years, it seems likely that it will be many more years before the “gender pay gap” is eliminated – if it ever is.

With all the recent publicity hailing victory for female workers in the Birmingham City Council equal pay case, you could be forgiven for thinking that pay inequality is on its way out. But you’d be wrong. All these women have won so far is the right to have their claims heard, and not thrown out as “out of time”. So what was all the fuss about?

More importantly, why is there still a “gender pay gap” in 21st century Britain?

The Birmingham case dealt with a technical legal point which nevertheless will prove important not just for those women but for many others who have been paid less than their male counterparts for years. The judgment related to the time limits for bringing claims in different types of court. The Council was arguing that, because Equal Pay claims can be heard “more conveniently” in an Employment Tribunal, the women should not be allowed to bring those claims in a Civil Court. The crucial difference is that in an Employment Tribunal the claim must be brought either during employment or within six months of the termination of the employment; in a Civil Court the time limit is six years. If the decision had gone in favour of the Council, the women would not have been able to have their claims heard at all, as they would have been out of time. Instead it was ruled that their cases could be heard in the Civil Court. Whether they win remains to be seen. In other words, this is not the end of the story, but rather the beginning.

The second question, why there is still a gender pay gap so many years after the law was introduced, is much harder to answer. A little more information about the Equal Pay Act 1970 (now subsumed into the Equality Act 2010) will help to put this into context.

Before its introduction, it was perfectly legitimate to pay a woman less for doing exactly the same job as a man. The famous Ford strike of 1968 (recently celebrated in the film: Made in Dagenham) led to the outlawing of unequal pay based purely on gender, not just when the sexes were doing “exactly the same job” but also for work that was substantially the same, and for work deemed to be “of equal value”.

The latter point addresses the fact that men and women are often not doing the same work, and that, historically, the sort of work that women do has been less well-paid than the sort of work men do, even if it is just as valuable and important for the functioning of society. It is not easy to compare different work to determine whether it is of equal value; this is generally achieved by means of a gender-neutral Job Evaluation process. Thus, it may be found that providing care services for the elderly is of equal value to refuse collection, even though it is quite different work.

Where two jobs have been judged to be of equal value, if a differential in pay is discovered which cannot be attributed to anything other gender, it is illegal, and action must be taken to eliminate the inequality. As it is not usually possible to reduce the men’s pay, this normally means giving pay rises to the women. In Local Authorities, budgetary constraints have often been used as a reason for failing to address these pay inequalities – often with the tacit complicity of the Trade Unions. It is this that has led to “mass actions” by women, such as those in Birmingham, who have clubbed together to fight for compensation.

Even in the 21st century, there are still many jobs which are associated more with one gender than the other. Think of traditionally poorly-paid professions, such as teaching and nursing, and you will soon realise that they are female-dominated. It is also the case that the entry into formerly male-dominated professions, like medicine and the law, by large numbers of women, tends to depress salaries in those professions. Even within the same profession, it is often the case that the top of the profession is more male-dominated, with the women in the middle and lower ranks. There are many female GPs and solicitors, for example, but not so many female surgeons or judges.

There is statistical evidence that females tend to be represented in a narrower range of jobs than men, being more heavily clustered around the average earnings levels, with more men in the very highest and – paradoxically – the very lowest paid jobs.

The fact that more women than men work part time also depresses the average earnings figures for women. It’s important, when looking at the various figures and percentages quoted, to be sure you are comparing like with like.

Then there is the so-called “motherhood penalty”, i.e. the fact that many women interrupt their careers by taking time out to have children, often returning to work part-time for a few years while their children are very young, which affects the speed with which they progress up the ladder, and may prevent them getting as far as they might otherwise have done. Even the fear on the part of employers that women will take time out to have children, may affect their decisions relating to recruitment or promotion of women - yes, that’s illegal, but it still happens, I’ve seen it myself.

Thus, legislation notwithstanding, unless and until the burden of childcare and domestic responsibilities is more equally shared between the sexes, it seems that gender pay equality will remain a dream to aspire to, rather than a reality.