Pay is suddenly and decisively on the radar. With almost half a million people in Britain now paid less than a living wage, in-work poverty has – thanks to Labour’s strong stance – become the problem everyone wants to solve. However, a neglected aspect of the discussion has been the impact of low pay on women.
Low pay is not spread equally across gender; the people getting up at 4am and catching buses to work in care homes or clean offices are disproportionately female. Low Pay Britain, the Resolution Foundation’s report earlier this month, indicates the scale of the problem. It shows that women comprise 61 per cent of those earning less than the national living wage (£8.55 in London and £7.45 elsewhere), making them almost twice as likely as men to be poorly paid.
Moreover, women form two-thirds of those earning the minimum wage (currently £6.19) or less, according to the Fawcett Society. An estimated 56 per cent of those on zero-hours contracts are female, and 74 per cent of those are in part-time work.
The 1970 Equal Pay Act prevented women being paid less than men doing the same job. But it could not tackle the systemic and cultural factors which mean women are still ‘underemployed’, still do insecure jobs, and still work in badly paid sectors. These are, by their nature, subtler and harder to address. Domestic legislation and European Union Directives can help, but there is no silver bullet.
What is required is a clear outline of the areas in need of change. Here are five things I think we need to focus on:
– Breaking cultural ties between gender and sector
The lowest-paid jobs are in hospitality (where 68 per cent earn less than the living wage), retail (41 per cent), and social care or health work (22 per cent). These are sectors which continue to be female-dominated. There is still a stigma to a man becoming a carer or serving dinner at a school – or, for that matter, a women getting a job in construction or engineering. We need more focus on education, to break the cycle that ties gender to job.
– Offering better maternity and childcare arrangements
Since 2010 there has been a 30 per cent increase in long-term unemployed women aged 50-64. This compares with a four per cent rise nationally, illustrating that older women – those whose children have grown up – are most likely to drop off the bottom rung of the employment ladder. To stop this happening we must change things so that parenthood does not push women into lower-paid jobs. We must work with employers to encourage flexible work and job-shares.
– Show the business benefits of paying women better
Businesses are not, as a rule, any more sexist than those in the public and third sector, but they are more driven by the bottom line. We need companies to be proactive in helping women stay in jobs, so that they are not forced to downgrade to low-paid work if they have children or move sectors. And we need businesses that are already doing the right thing to talk about it more.
– Creating make more space for women at the top
Only 17 per cent of people on the boards of FTSE 100 companies are female, and only six per cent of managing directors at big firms. Inevitably, with little room at the top, women become over-represented at the bottom. We need equal representation from the tip to the base of the UK jobs pyramid – from the CEO to the person who cleans his office.
– Protecting all workers
The number subsisting on less than a living wage rose from 3.4m to 4.8m between 2009 and 2012. Twenty-five per cent of women are paid less than the living wage compared to 15 per cent of men, so the rise in low pay inevitably hit women hardest. Conversely, as the people most likely to be underpaid, women would benefit most from the abolition of low pay. It may seem an obvious point, but the less people are badly paid the less women are badly paid.
At the EU we have resolved to eliminate the gender pay gap by 2020. Breaking the link between gender and low pay is vital in doing this.
Labour conference showed that we are the only party genuinely committed to eliminating in-work poverty. But to achieve a truly fair society we must speak up more for the women who continue to bear the brunt of the problem.
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Mary Honeyball is MEP for London and a member of the women’s rights and gender equality committee. She is Labour’s spokesperson for women in Europe. She tweets @MaryHoneyball
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