Working girl

6th Feb 2010

How near are we to com­plete sex­ual equal­ity in the work­place? The efforts of both the Gov­ern­ment and the Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham are scru­ti­nised by Stephanie Har­vey. Is fair pay fair play?

THE Gov­ern­ment Equal­i­ties Office (GEO) says its vision is ‘a fair and equal soci­ety for all.’ How close is this to the truth? A prospect once deemed impos­si­ble, it appears that women and the issue of sex­ual equal­ity has improved in recent years; yet there are still improve­ments to be made for the future.

The GEO is the first depart­ment of its kind, cre­ated in 2007 and respon­si­ble for equal­i­ties leg­is­la­tion in the UK. Its prac­ti­cal aim is to reduce dis­crim­i­na­tion and ‘inte­grate gen­der equal­ity in all gov­ern­ment pol­icy.’ It states its prin­ci­ples as nec­es­sary not only to have a soci­ety based on equal­ity and fair­ness, which is impor­tant for soci­etal cohe­sive­ness, but vital for a com­pet­i­tive econ­omy to func­tion prop­erly as it must draw on all tal­ents and abil­i­ties. If it is blink­ered by prej­u­dice the econ­omy will suf­fer, to the cur­rent amount of losses at £29 bil­lion based on gov­ern­ment research. In 2009 the Hon. Har­riet Har­man, Min­is­ter for Women and Equal­ity expressed her views on equal­ity, views that are being devel­oped through the imple­men­ta­tion of var­i­ous schemes and poli­cies: ‘Fair­ness and equal­ity are the hall­marks of a mod­ern and con­fi­dent society.’

The Government’s pri­or­i­ties on women’s equal­ity are out­lined as fol­lows: they are work­ing to sup­port women and fam­i­lies who care for chil­dren and rel­a­tives, tackle vio­lence against women and the treat­ment of women offend­ers, and to increase rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Black Asian and minor­ity eth­nic women. And how is it far­ing? Accord­ing to the report released in 2009, sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments have been enforced in the two-year period since its arrival. ‘Strong and sta­ble fam­i­lies are the linch­pin of soci­ety,’ accord­ing to the report. Fam­i­lies, among other things, receive increase in bud­gets through improve­ments to tax cred­its and ben­e­fit from extended rights to flex­i­ble work­ing and child­care arrange­ments. This is mak­ing it eas­ier for women to man­age a career and a fam­ily at the same time.

There have also been improved and more coör­di­nated approaches to all forms of vio­lence towards women, reduc­ing inci­dents and offer­ing more sup­port when it does occur. This has been in par­tic­u­lar directed towards the fight against sex­ual exploita­tion: pros­ti­tu­tion, traf­fick­ing, and forced mar­riages and ‘hon­our crimes’. Whilst still too low, the fig­ures of rape con­vic­tions since 1997 have risen from a fig­ure of around 500 to nearly 800 (2007). But the gov­ern­ment esti­mates that as many as 95 per cent of rapes are never reported to the police at all. Of the rapes that were reported from 2007 to 2008, only 6.5 per cent resulted in a con­vic­tion, com­pared with 34 per cent of crim­i­nal cases in gen­eral. The major­ity of con­vic­tions for rape resulted from an admis­sion of guilt by the defen­dant, whereas less than one quar­ter of all those charged with rape were con­victed fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful trial.

Finally, the intro­duc­tion of the Equal­ity Bill has been the dri­ving mech­a­nism to the intro­duc­tion of sev­eral schemes to bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in under­rep­re­sented groups, ensur­ing women have a big­ger say in pub­lic life and can bring home issues con­cern­ing the com­mu­nity that would oth­er­wise remain unaddressed.

How­ever, equal pay is still a debat­able issue. The widest pay gap exists in the skilled trades, the nar­row­est in pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tions. Accord­ing to gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics for 2009, women are earn­ing 16.4 per cent less than men’s full time pay, although these fig­ures are down from 2008. How­ever, the Guardian doc­u­mented in 2007 find­ings pro­vided by HESA, the Higher Edu­ca­tion Sta­tis­tic Agency which fol­lowed 25,000 grad­u­ates. It revealed a pay gap of £1,000 on aver­age between men and women’s earn­ings up to three years after grad­u­a­tion – ‘men are sig­nif­i­cantly more likely to go into high paid jobs’ – after three years, 40 per cent of men earn over £25,000 a year ver­sus only 26 per cent of women, coun­ter­ing the pop­u­lar argu­ment that the only rea­son women earn less is due to their deci­sion to start families.

It is within the finance sec­tor that the great­est pay gap is revealed. Despite mak­ing up equal pro­por­tions, women earn on aver­age 55 per cent less, with men receiv­ing five times the per­for­mance pay (or bonuses) of women, aver­ag­ing at £14,554, to women’s £2,875. Most sig­nif­i­cantly, the inquiry revealed no improve­ments have been made to address this discrepancy.

But it seems that sex­ual inequal­ity in the work force has gen­er­ally been reduced since the intro­duc­tion of the Equal Pay Act in 1970. This made it unlaw­ful for employ­ers to dis­crim­i­nate between men and women in pay and con­di­tions when doing the same or sim­i­lar work: at this point women earned on aver­age 37 per cent less than men. War­ren Far­rell, an Amer­i­can author and soci­ol­o­gist who has car­ried out exten­sive and very detailed research on the earn­ings of men and women, has con­cluded that men do earn on aver­age more than women but this is because they take on harder or more risky, stress­ful jobs, and when this was not the case they earned the same amount. But ulti­mately he con­cludes that it was down to the choices men and women make. As Edwina Moor­house, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sity of Birmingham’s Women Asso­ci­a­tion, sug­gests, ‘the great­est oppo­nents to sex­ual equal­ity can be women them­selves. Women must realise they are just as capa­ble as men, and must con­tinue to realise their full poten­tial and not being what the media or tra­di­tional stereo­types tells them they must be.’