Conclusions and recommendations
General
1. Our
aim in undertaking this inquiry was to produce some practical
suggestions on how to tackle occupational segregation. Unfortunately,
the inquiry has been curtailed because of the expectation that
a general election will take place shortly. We have therefore
been unable to treat the issues as comprehensively as we wished.
However, we believe that there is value in publishing our conclusions
and recommendations based on the evidence we have received. This
is an important subject, and we hope that our successors will
return to it in due course, perhaps in the context of the final
report from the Women and Work Commission later this year. (Paragraph
3)
Reasons for occupational segregation: lack of
knowlege
2. The
experience of some members of the Committee supports the EOC's
contention that, though it is by no means a universal attitude,
a significant number of schools seem to consider finding work
experience placements an onerous addition to their core teaching
work, and they try to devolve as much of the responsibility to
individual pupils as possible. For both students and employers,
this is a wasted opportunity. (Paragraph 15)
3. We recognise that
providing well structured and informative work placements is a
burden on businesses, and that employers are understandably anxious
about health and safety issues and other statutory responsibilities
towards the young people involved. However, especially in sectors
suffering from skills shortages, there is a strong argument from
economic self-interest for employers to take seriously the opportunity
afforded by work placements to "sell" their industry
and their company. The burden is especially acute for small businesses,
and here we see a role for Sector Skills Councils and local trade
associations to provide advice and support. It might, for example,
be possible to co-ordinate a programme of brief 'taster' sessions
in several companies to share the responsibility more widely.
(Paragraph 16)
4. While the issue
of education of 14-19 year olds is a matter for our colleagues
on the Education and Skills Committee, not us, we feel it a shame
that, so far, although there has been a marked improvement in
the educational achievements of girls, which should have led to
a greater range of career options for these girls when they leave
school, the pattern of occupational choices has not changed as
much as one might have expected. We are confident that the DTI
and the Learning and Skills Council are giving due attention to
this issue, but we have doubts about whether the message has really
penetrated down to the level of individual schools, and the local
businesses that might benefit from having a wider range of candidates
for jobs. We are also uncertain of the extent to which the Department
for Education and Skills has ensured that the challenging of gender
stereotypes is fully incorporated into the curriculum and into
the general approach of schools towards fitting their pupils for
adult life. (Paragraph 18)
5. Although there
have been improvements in the provision of careers advice and
work placements, and in the links between business and schools,
the quality still varies too much from place to place. The critical
links in the process of spreading best practice would appear to
be the local Learning and Skills Councils, local education authorities,
Sector Skills Councils, Regional Development Agencies, and local
trade associations such as Chambers of Commerce. Until all these
bodies are properly engaged in the process, it will be extremely
difficult to challenge the general culture of sexual stereotyping
of roles, and young people will not be given the information and
encouragement necessary to step outside the stereotypes. Half
the battle to improve women's pay and opportunities and to tackle
skills shortages will already have been lost. (Paragraph 19)
Reasons for occupational segregation: difficulties
with training
6. While
the Modern Apprenticeships programme is a key to alleviating skills
shortages in the UK and to providing young people with the means
to access higher value and higher paid work, it appears that the
structure of the apprenticeships may have been designed too much
with the traditional school-leaver recruit in mind. The development
of schemes for older people, particularly those with caring responsibilities,
is vital to attracting more women into male-dominated sectors;
and we therefore welcome the pilots being run for older people.
However, we are disappointed that the Modern Apprenticeships programme
seems to date to be reinforcing gender segregation among young
people. (Paragraph 24)
7. The example of
Foundation Degrees shows that it is possible to construct training
to make it accessible to the greatest range of people. We recognise
the difficulty in extending this flexibility into employer-based
schemes: the sole purpose of FE institutions is to provide training,
while employers have to juggle the sometimes conflicting demands
of efficiency and immediate productivity against providing for
future skills needs via training. However, the development of
flexibility should be encouraged, not hindered, by the overall
requirements for Modern Apprenticeship schemes. We recommend that
the Government review the structure of such apprenticeships to
ensure that the maximum possible flexibility is built into them.
We commend the suggestion that the Government should reconsider
whether the programme of Young Apprenticeships, which is aimed
at 14-16 year olds, should be used actively to encourage young
people to think about a wider range of job options by offering
training in three sectors rather than just one. (Paragraph 25)
8. We were told there
was a variation in the degree to which local Learning and Skills
Councils were using Equality and Diversity Impact Measures to
tackle gender segregation. We think it would encourage the wider
adoption of best practice if the Learning and Skills Council itself
set a national indicator to show how seriously it took this issue.
(Paragraph 26)
9. We note the complexity
of the requirements for qualifying for and accessing the training
schemes under the New Deal umbrella. This in itself may be a deterrent
to the unemployed accessing the training that would benefit both
them and the UK economy. (Paragraph 28)
Reasons for occupational segregation: business
cultures
10. It
is stating the obvious to say that the culture of industries will
not be changed quickly. Both employers and trade unions could
do more to tackle the overtly sexist elements of workplace culture,
simply by making it clear that certain behaviour is unacceptable.
We welcome the indications that some companies are now indicating
that they are unwilling to do business with firms that have tolerated,
let alone tacitly encouraged, harassment and discrimination.
(Paragraph 33)
11. The problem of
the 'downgrading' of jobs which have increasingly become the preserve
of women is not a new one: it happened to the clerical/secretarial
sector almost 100 years ago. Dealing with this problem would require
an overturning of the traditional view of caring and service (and
largely female) jobs as inherently inferior—less skilled,
less valuable, lower paid—to 'wealth-creating' financial,
technical and manufacturing (and largely male) jobs. This is beyond
the scope of our Report, but we note, in passing, the example
set by the Government in its re-evaluation of the work done by
different occupational groups within the National Health Service
in the context of its Agenda for Change programme. We would welcome
moves by any other employer to undertake a similarly fundamental
review of the value—and rewards—attached to the range
of jobs within their business. (Paragraph 34)
12. It is only comparatively
recently that women have regularly reached senior positions in
professions in which they have been well established for a long
time, such as the law and medicine. It is as yet too early to
judge the success of the Government's Strategy for Women in Science,
Engineering and Technology, which was launched in 2003. Changing
the culture in areas like SET will clearly require sustained effort,
but the process started by Baroness Greenfield's SET Fair report
in 2002 appears to be gathering momentum. (Paragraph 36)
Reasons for occupational segregation: lack of
flexible working
13. There
is a long-established view that certain jobs—senior managerial
posts, skilled manufacturing jobs, key service industry posts—are
unsuited to part-time and flexible working. This view is accepted
far too uncritically: there appear to be a number of good examples
where it has been perfectly practicable to re-arrange working
hours while maintaining—sometimes even improving—productivity
and performance. There are already indications that employers
are re-thinking their attitudes, not least in light of the success
of the recent introduction of the parental right to request flexible
working. A number of employers have already extended this and
have indicated that they are willing to consider requests from
any of their employees. At present, we would not recommend introducing
an element of compulsion on employers: the codification of best
practice seems more likely to facilitate its widespread adoption
than any statutory requirement would. However, we believe it would
be useful to monitor the success rate of such requests, and to
examine the reasons for refusal to see whether there are any grounds
for instituting the sort of mechanism to challenge an employer's
decision that Amicus suggested to us. (Paragraph 45)
The role of employers
14. We
received evidence that the experience of equal pay audits has
been mixed. Some of our witnesses believe they are of doubtful
effectiveness as a tool to make companies take the issue of occupational
segregation more seriously. They are probably of more use as a
way of marking out those companies that employ best practice from
others, which—given the likely consequences for recruitment
and retention—may concentrate the minds of the less forward-looking
companies. We do not wish to denigrate them as a means of facilitating
the process of changing the overall culture with respect to equal
treatment of the sexes. (Paragraph 48)
15. Employers are
showing increasing awareness of the damage that occupational segregation
can do to their businesses. However, although there are some imaginative
attempts to tackle the problems that deter women from taking certain
jobs, as yet these seem to occur in isolation, and there needs
to be more effort to share best practice. We discuss the potential
role of the Regional Development Agencies ('RDAs') in this in
the next Chapter; but, with a few honourable exceptions, there
is also a need for greater effort by Sector Skills Councils and
trade associations. We are not asking business to behave altruistically—though
some companies will doubtless do so—but we do expect them
to behave fairly, and to be aware of the effect on their competitiveness
of a failure to act. (Paragraph 51)
The role of the RDAs
16. Some
RDAs are running schemes to provide women returning to work after
career breaks with advice on career options, access to training,
work placements, and good quality, affordable childcare. We are
concerned that they are still at the pilot stage—we would
have thought that RDAs would have already finished experimenting
in this area and that they would be disseminating and adopting
best practice by now. We are also surprised at how tentative the
DTI seems to be about the development of these pilot programmes:
"If the model proves successful then, potentially, there
is scope to explore whether it could be applied more widely"
shows less than wholehearted belief that successful programmes
will be adopted by RDAs en masse. (Paragraph 52)
17. RDAs may have
committed themselves to seriously tackling occupational segregation
as a major focus of their work in improving the skills of the
workforce and boosting productivity in their area; but the comparative
silence about what they are doing leads us to conclude that most
have yet to take the issue fully on board. Given their key role
in ensuring that the needs and wishes of local businesses are
taken into account in regional development policies, and their
position as local agents for the delivery of much of the Government's
policy with respect to industry and commerce, we would have expected
them to be playing a larger part in the attempts to engage the
attention of employers on the disadvantages of occupational segregation.
(Paragraph 53)
Co-ordination in central Government
18. We
think that there needs to be greater co-ordination between government
departments. Since 2002-03 there has been an explicit Public Service
Agreement target across Government about delivering achievable
improvements in equality for women. We are also aware that the
Women and Equality Unit has been given the task of advising other
departments on their specific targets for achieving this and of
reporting on progress across Government. However, we suspect that
other departments have not fully integrated into their policy
decisions the need to be conscious of any effects on occupational
segregation. We believe, for example, that the DfES has only recently
started to consider the issue of segregation in the recruitment
of apprentices; the Learning and Skills Council admitted that,
although it had held information on training broken down by gender,
it had never thought of making use of it before the EOC's investigation
into the area; and we are still uncertain of the extent to which
the DWP's general training and employment programmes take into
account the difficulties faced by women returning to work. It
is not clear to us whether the slowness of other departments in
addressing the issues is a result of insufficient vigour in the
lead Department, the DTI, or a lack of co-operation from the other
departments. It appears to us that the Women and Equality Unit
still has considerable work to do, and may have neither the authority
in relation to other departments nor the resources to do it. (Paragraph
55)
19. The Government
has given a strong lead in the field of racial equality through
both the adoption of a general public duty to promote such equality
and through procurement policy. We think it would be valuable
for the question of gender equality to be treated in the same
way. (Paragraph 57)
Equal Pay Act
20. While
we understand the Minister's concerns, it seems to us that the
1970 Equal Pay Act is reaching the limits of its usefulness. There
appears to be a consensus among analysts of the labour market
that most of the remaining gender pay gap is attributable to
factors other than 'straightforward' discrimination, and it is
notable that the rate of decrease in the pay gap has slowed almost
to a stop in recent years. Although there are difficulties in
dealing with the deep-seated problem of the undervaluing of women's
work through legislation, the concepts of "work of equal
value" and indirect discrimination are already embedded in
statute, and we believe that it should be possible to build on
these. We regret that the Government appears to be ruling changes
out as 'too difficult' without having undertaken a serious review
of the options. (Paragraph 59)
21. We have not had
time to examine these issues in the depth necessary for us to
make a recommendation for specific legislative change, and we
realise that considerable further work would be required before
appropriate legislation could be drafted. However, we believe
that the persistent undervaluing of women in the workplace is
a major obstacle to the UK's being considered to be a society
with true gender equality. (Paragraph 60)
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