Memorandum submitted by the Equal Opportunities
Commission
INTRODUCTION
1. The Equal Opportunities Commission (the
EOC) is a statutory body whose duties are to work towards the
elimination of sex discrimination and to promote equality of opportunity
between men and women generally. The EOC welcomes the opportunity
to submit evidence to the Trade and Industry Committee's Inquiry
into the implementation of the report of the Women and Work Commission
(the WWC) Shaping a Fairer Future.
2. The pay gap is a major issue with a number
of complex, inter-related causes and action to tackle it cannot
be achieved without the buy in of key stakeholders. The EOC therefore
very much welcomes the ambitious and wide-ranging recommendations
of the WWC report and the fact that consensus amongst those involved
has been achieved in so many key areas. We would like to pay tribute
to the key role of Baroness Prosser in achieving this consensus
in this important report. The leadership shown by the Prime Minister,
Chancellor and Minister for Women in launching the report is also
extremely welcome and we look forward to the new Minister for
Women's action plan for taking it forward.
3. The Chair of the EOC was a member of
the WWC and was therefore closely involved in drawing up the report;
and we will be working in partnership with Government to help
take some of the action plan forward.
4. In this submission we will look first
at the productivity gap and then comment briefly on each of the
main areas in the WWC report: maximising potential; combining
work and family life; lifelong opportunities for women in training
and work and workplace practices.
THE PRODUCTIVITY
GAP
5. We welcome in particular Shaping a Fairer
Future's recognition of the fact that closing the gender pay gap
would add as much as £23 billion to the UK economy. These
findings are confirmed by a number of our recent completed and
ongoing general formal investigations, as set out below.
OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
AND SKILL
SHORTAGES
6. Our investigation into occupational segregation,
completed in March 2005, discovered a clear correlation between
the employment sectors where women were under-represented and
skill shortages, showing that occupational segregation was causing
employers to miss out on a huge potential pool of labour with
which to plug their skills gaps. Despite many young people being
interested in non-traditional work experience, training and work,
and many employers recognising that recruiting more women could
address skills shortages and bring business benefits, the Investigation
showed that Britain was failing to open up real opportunity and
choice for girls and boys entering work via vocational routeways.
The current "education to training to work" system was
particularly failing girls from lower socio-economic groups—the
young women most in need of support—by channeling them into
generally lower paid training and jobs than young men and not
opening up wider and better paid opportunities.
PART-TIME
WORKERS WORKING
BELOW THEIR
POTENTIAL
7. Our Investigation into Part-time and
Flexible Working found that the way in which Britain's flexible
and part-time working arrangements are structured results in their
failing to meet the needs of working women and men, leaving 5.6
million people (four out of five of Britain's seven million part-time
workers) working in jobs that do not use their potential. Our
Investigation found that over 3.5 million of these workers had
actually used higher qualifications or skills or had had more
supervision/management of staff in previ1ous jobs, while a further
two million believed they could "easily work at a higher
level." [16]
PAKISTANI, BANGLADESHI
AND BLACK
CARIBBEAN WOMEN
8. One of our current investigations Moving
On Up? is examining the experiences both of Pakistani and
Bangladeshi women who wish to work outside the home, and of Black
Caribbean women, who are under-represented at senior and professional
levels in the labour market. Our Investigation shows that the
younger generation of ethnic minority women are increasingly well
qualified, well educated, and want to work. In terms of achievement
at GCSE level, ethnic minority girls are catching up or even overtaking
ethnic minority and white boys and they are more likely to carry
on into higher education. Given that a recent Skills Review for
the Government identified a need to increase the proportion of
the workforce qualified to NVQ level 4 and above from 27% to 38%
by—2020, ethnic minority girls as a group look set to meet
this challenge—if we give them the opportunity to get jobs
that match their qualifications.
9. But despite their higher qualifications
in employment and skills ethnic minority women are being held
back. Higher qualifications make little difference to the pay
gaps suffered by women from all ethnic groups relative to white
men—even though they do make a difference to most groups
of ethnic minority men. Ethnic minority women are even more concentrated
in a narrow range of jobs than women as a whole and they are less
likely to be managers or senior officials compared to white women,
or to their male counterparts. EOC research shows that young ethnic
minority women are three to four times more likely than white
women to say they have often taken a job at a lower level than
their qualifications, because that is all they could find. And
Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are also much less likely to return
to work after they have had children.
10. Future demographic and labour market
changes mean that ethnic minorities will make up an increasing
share of the future working population, particularly in key cities.
Ethnic minority women are central to Britain's success economically
and socially, but if they are to realise their full potential
action is needed to open up greater opportunity at critical life
points. We hope that this objective will form a key part of the
WWC action plan.
MAXIMISING POTENTIAL
11. All the recommendations here are welcome.
Shaping a Fairer Future rightly gives prominence to the
importance of tackling occupational segregation; and we are working
with the Women and Equality Unit to help ensure its recommendations
are taken forward, building on our earlier investigation.
OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
12. We welcome the extent to which the WWC
has endorsed the findings and recommendations of our Investigation
into Occupational Segregation. We called for a National Strategy
on occupational segregation linked to economic and skills strategies
to give effect to the objectives of challenging stereotyping and
opening up choices and we made specific recommendations for actions
to deliver change. Since we last reported on the Investigation
to the Committee, we have been working closely with the WES and
we are able to report significant progress on key GFI/WWC recommendations.
13. At our One Year On Conference recently,
Bill Rammell, Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further
and Higher Education described a range of DfES pilots to challenge
segregation including non-traditional tasters for young people
making vocational choices at 14, new models of careers advice,
information and guidance on wider choices, non-traditional work
experience placements, project-based apprenticeships to secure
on-site experience for women, adult apprenticeships targeting
women in shortage sectors and development of national equality
and diversity impact measures for gender segregation on apprenticeships.
He also reported the results of the WES survey of apprenticeship
pay rates that showed clearly the pay advantages for those working
in male-dominated sectors including engineering, construction
and ICT. For example, the survey revealed a £40 or 26% per
week pay gap between male and female apprentices and that Level
2 early years care and education apprentices earned the lowest
rates across all levels and sectors, averaging only £78 per
week compared with level 2 construction apprentices at £136
per week. The Minister endorsed the importance of making this
information available to young people making choices. The EOC
and TUC have called for this survey to be repeated in 12 months
time to monitor the impact of the new £80 per week requirement.
14. The wide range of supportive speakers
at the Investigation One Year On conference—Stella Manzie
for the Women and Work Commission, Shirley Cramer, Chair of the
E&D Committee at the LSC; John Cridland CBI and Brendan Barber
TUC, CITB and Summitskills, young apprentices and employers -
sent clear signals that the case for change set by the EOC and
WWC is now accepted across government and key stakeholders and
that some actions are already underway. We are particularly pleased
to be able to report that the new agenda has informed all policy
white/green papers since the report of our investigation: Skills
Strategy, 14-19 and Youth Matters Green Paper. Here too, we continue
to work with the WEU and relevant officials to ensure that WWC
and EOC recommendations are implemented. We would like to see
the action plan set out clear mechanisms for ensuring that the
positive momentum on policy and practice changes continues.
COMBINING WORK
AND FAMILY
LIFE
15. Again, all the recommendations here
are welcome. We particularly welcome the proposal for a Quality
Part-Time Work Change Initiative, and other proposals aimed at
achieving a culture change, so that more senior jobs in the skilled
occupations and the professions are more open to part-time and
flexible working. This is critical to closing the pay gap. We
will be helping to take these recommendations forward, with the
Women and Equality Unit, through our current Investigation into
the Transformation of Work.
16. We are pleased that the WWC report recognises
the importance of the recommendation from our investigation into
part-time and flexible working, Britain's Hidden Brain Drain,
on training managers and supporting small businesses. Training
is vital to give managers the right knowledge and skills and help
them develop positive attitudes towards managing flexible working.
Middle managers are often the "gatekeepers" of work-life
balance in an organisation. [17]The
inability of some line managers effectively to manage flexible
workers, and/or their negative attitudes to flexible working generally,
are major barriers to the effective implementation of flexible
working policies. [18]In
our survey of HR professionals, virtually everyone said managers
need to be trained for flexible working to work effectively, but
only one in eight said their own organisation provided sufficient
training in how to manage flexible working. [19]Small
businesses would also benefit from support on costs. We welcome
the WWC recommendations on the development of a training package
to support flexible working, the examination of fiscal incentives
for small firms, additional funding for IiP, and for trade union
equality reps and hope to see the focus on mangers sustained in
the action plan.
PART-TIME
AND FLEXIBLE
WORKING NOT
JUST FOR
WOMEN WITH
YOUNG CHILDREN
17. It is important that initiatives to
open up higher paid part-time work are not just targeted at women,
as this may serve to reinforce the perceptions that only women
should carry out a caring role and that only women need to work
flexibly. Increasingly, women and men are sharing caring roles,
thereby making it easier for women to achieve their full economic
potential. Access to flexible working is important to men too.
Nearly half of the increase in part-time working over the last
20 years has come from men—a million extra male part-timers.
[20]In
the past two years one in eight fathers of under-six year olds
has made a formal request to work flexibly. [21]Increasingly
men and women are working part-time at different times in their
lives, not just for the more "traditional" reasons linked
to parenting and caring responsibilities, but also as students
and before and after state pension age. For someone with a disability,
flexible working can be the sort of "reasonable adjustment"
needed both to support their recruitment or their retention in
work. Flexible and part-time working is the future: a pattern
of working that most of us will want to access at different times
of our lives.
18. By 2020, two-fifths of the population
will be over 50[22]
and our Investigation into Part-time and Flexible Working showed
that there may be as many as a million over 50s who would return
to work if the conditions were right ie they could work flexibly.
[23]More
people are going to be working longer and retiring later, while
many others will want to work reduced hours before and after the
statutory retirement age. More people will have caring responsibilities
for older relatives and may choose flexible working to make this
possible. Caring, whether for an infant or for an elderly dependant,
is no longer the sole preserve of women—19% of men in the
45-64 year old age groupare carers. [24]The
Government has recently consulted on extending the right in the
Employment Act 2002 to request flexible working beyond mothers
and fathers of children under six or disabled children under 18,
and we warmly welcome its extension in the Work and Families Act
to carers.
EXTENDING THE
RIGHT TO
REQUEST
19. In our Investigation into Part-time
and Flexible Working, in our submission to the WWC and in our
submission to the Government on the Work and Families Consultation,
we argued that the right to request flexible working should be
extended to all employees; and the WWC also argues that it should
be extended to a wider group of employees. The best practice employers
we have consulted have found that it is best to open up opportunities
to work flexibly to everyone, not just to parents or carers. Employers
have found that so long as flexible working applies only to certain
groups, the benefits to the organization are constrained by the
inability to manage the issue in the round. The available evidence
suggests that experience of the right to ask has also been generally
positive for both employers and employees. The DTI's Second Work-Life
Balance Study, for example, found a high level of support for
work-life balance amongst employers. The majority agreed that
everyone should be able to balance their work and home lives in
the way they want (65%). Generally speaking, support for the basic
principles and concepts of work-life balance was supported by
actions—employers that indicated the strongest levels of
support tended to provide a wider range of practices and entitlements
that helped their employees with their work-life balance. [25]
20. Moreover, findings from the 2004 Workplace
Employment Relations Survey (WEBS) show that the most commonly
available arrangement for flexible working (available in 70% of
workplaces) was the ability to reduce working hours and that the
majority of workplaces providing reduced working hours did not
put any restrictions on who was eligible to use this arrangement.
21. Our investigation into part-time and
flexible working found that there was a shortage of supply of
higher paid part-time opportunities, coupled with 3.6 million
part-timers working in a lower level job than they had held in
the past. Extending the right to ask to all employees could be
a powerful way of achieving change and would increase the number
of people who could start to work part-time or flexibly in the
same job—ie not having to trade down. Given the Government's
plans to extend state retirement age, action to extend the right
to ask to all age groups could also be very important.
THE TRANSFORMATION
OF WORK
22. All of the evidence quoted above confirms
that people's expectations of work are changing. Younger people
want to explore a number of possible options before they commit
to full-time work and both men and women want to be able to take
time out of their careers at various points in their lives without
damaging their prospects. [26]To
accommodate these changing demographics and the increasing demands
for flexible working from employers working in a global/24/7 context,
radical thinking about the nature of working time is needed so
that part-time and flexible working is no longer seen as a deviation
from the norm. In our latest Investigation, into the Transformation
of Work, we are exploring and developing innovative models and
solutions to better match the workplace of the future with the
workforce of the future. We are looking at innovations such as
opening up flexible working to share between different members
of a household—for example, between mothers' working time
and fathers' working time, or between adult siblings caring for
an older parent. The kind of flexibility offered by, for example,
BT, HSBC or McDonalds, empowers people to make decisions for themselves,
while enabling companies to retain talent and tap into the skills
of all their staff.
23. Working together with employers and
others, and drawing on the expertise and innovative ideas of the
best, we hope to find some new and creative ways of transforming
work to create real flexibility and believable choices for individuals
and employers. Turning conventional job design on its head enables
organisations to bring in the skills that are needed, while enabling
workers to make the best use of their talents.
LIFELONG OPPORTUNITIES
FOR WOMEN
IN TRAINING
AND WORK
24. We particularly welcome the WWC's recommendations
in this area, and we have been working with the WES and LSC to
operationalise these. Research for the EOC shows that ESF funded
projects, under current funding criteria, are playing a critical
role in filling gaps in core provision for women by opening up
training and work opportunities beyond level 2, and in non-traditional
sectors and with innovative advice and guidance. We see the continuation
of this role as a key task for the 2007-13 round of funding, as
set out below. This is because the Government Skills Strategy
targets public funds on those deemed most in need through lack
of basic qualifications and focuses on advice, support and skills
training at level 2. This excludes from mainstream training and
skills programmes women who take time out or drop out to raise
a family. Accessing routeways back into work through advice and
guidance, updating old skills or retraining in sectors where women
have traditionally been under-represented is a major challenge
and, as yet, one unmet through mainstream government programmes.
The National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF—see also
paragraph 38) for the next round of ESF funding, by taking account
of the WWC recommendations, could provide a means of tackling
that challenge and we hope to see this picked up in the action
plan.
WORKPLACE PRACTICES
25. We note and welcome the recommendations
in the WWC designed to encourage all employers, including private
sector employers, to do more to promote gender equality; but we
think there is scope to develop thinking further.
THE PUBLIC
SECTOR—THE
GENDER EQUALITY
DUTY
26. In April 2007 public authorities will
become subject to specific duties to eliminate sex discrimination
and promote gender equality. This is an extremely welcome and
significant step forward, which we are pleased to see reinforced
by the WWC recommendation that public sector employers should
be accountable to a Ministerial Committee. It is important that
the specific duties should be action focused, and include requirements
to collect relevant data and to carry out to impact assessments
of new and current policies. The duties will also require public
authorities to "consider the need to have objectives that
address the causes of any differences between the pay of men and
women resulting from their sex" and it is important that
these are linked to national objectives by the Government so that
co-ordinated action can be taken. For example, action on occupational
segregation involves many different public sector players who
cannot work in isolation.
27. The introduction of these duties will
give added weight to the drivers already existing in the public
sector—these include Government leadership (eg requiring
all government departments to have carried out equal pay reviews);
inspection regimes (eg Best Value Indicators in local government);
centralized pay negotiations (eg Higher Education); and trade
union pressure (eg the Civil Service). The higher degree of union
organization within the public sector also makes the threat of
legal action a greater risk, and thereby a stronger driver for
change, for public than private sector employers. There is already
a gap between the incidence of good equalities practice in the
public and private sectors, and there is a danger that unless
the private sector is subject to an approach similar to that soon
to apply in the public sector, this gap may widen still further.
THE PRIVATE
SECTOR
28. The pay gap between men and women working
full-time in the private sector is nearly 10 percentage points
bigger than it is for public sector workers. The EOC's latest
survey monitoring the incidence of equal pay reviews shows that
the least equal pay review activity is in the private sector.
While 61 % of large public sector organisations have completed
an equal pay review or have their first equal pay review in progress,
just 39% have done so in the private sector. [27]Moreover,
over half of large private sector organisations reported no past
equal pay review activity and were not planning to carry out an
equal pay review within the next twelve months; this compares
with a third of large public sector organisations.
29. Equal pay reviews are a useful means
of identifying not only pay discrimination, but also the other
causes of the pay gap, including occupational segregation and
lack of access to flexible working. Another way of addressing
pay discrimination is using public procurement to promote good
practice. The EOC therefore supports the recommendations made
by the WWC to develop equalities-led procurement advice and use
procurement as a means of spreading best practices in diversity
and equal pay matters.
30. While the wish to be seen as an "employer
of choice" is a key driver for change in the private sector,
existing accountability mechanisms do not recognise gender equality
as a matter to be reported upon, and the voluntary corporate social
responsibility mechanisms tend to focus on environmental and community
initiatives rather than employment. However, current and future
demographics mean that there are considerable business benefits
to be gained from closing the pay gap. As things stand at the
moment women's economic potential is not being fully realised
and both the economy as a whole and individual businesses stand
to gain from ensuring that women can reach their full potential.
The demographic and productivity case for closing the gender pay
gap needs to be more widely promulgated, and we hope that this
will form part of the action plan.
THE DISCRIMINATION
LAW REVIEW
31. We believe that there is a case for
modernizing the existing, 30 year old sex discrimination laws
to provide more effective regulation for both individuals and
employers. In our submission to the Discrimination Law Review
(the DLR) we are calling for an examination of the nature of the
responsibilities to be placed on institutions and organisations,
both private and public. Whilst there will always be a place for
individual rights, experience so far suggests that legal action
by individual women and men alone cannot redress the inequality
that causes the gender pay gap. A more proactive approach, akin
to that already being introduced in the public sector, is likely
to be more effective in closing the pay gap and achieving changes
that will benefit everyone, including employers themselves.
32. We are therefore asking the Government
to consider that the private and voluntary sectors should adopt
a similar pro-active approach to eliminating discrimination, and
promoting equality to the new duty for the public sector Far from
adding to the regulatory burden, this would simplify and modernize
the law and reduce the risk of tribunal cases. Our approach is
one of better regulation, not more regulation, and our aim is
to extend existing good practice so that it becomes common practice,
leading to wider business benefits. Promoting equality is about
prevention, rather than cure, and we want to reduce the need to
rely on legal cases—there have been a quarter of a million
Employment Tribunal cases of sex discrimination and 67,000 related
to equal pay in the thirty years since the Sex Discrimination
and Equal Pay Acts came into force, with record numbers filed
over the last five years. We are also keen that the DLR's examination
of the issues should address what support organisations, particularly
small employers, may need in closing the gender pay gap.
FUNDING THE
WWC RECOMMENDATIONS—THE
2007 CSR
33. If the report Shaping a Fairer Future
is to make change happen then the amount of funding made available
for implementing the recommendations will need to be sufficient
to the scale of the task. We suggest that both the 2007 Comprehensive
Spending Review (the CSR) and the National Strategic Reference
Framework (NSRF) for the next round of ESF funding provide strategic
opportunities to target resources on the implementation of the
WWC recommendations.
34. In laying the groundwork for the 2007
CSR the Government is taking forward a programme of work which
includes: an examination of the key long-term trends and challenges
that will shape the next decade, including demographic and socio-economic
change; and detailed studies of key areas where cross-cutting,
innovative policy responses are required to meet these long-term
challenges—we consider that Shaping a Fairer Future
amounts to just such a study and should be used to determine what
further investments and reforms are needed to enable the UK to
close the productivity gap.
35. In the public sector, closing the gender
pay gap and implementing the recommendations in Shaping a Fairer
Future need to be embedded in a strategic approach to the
implementation of the Equality Act 2006. The Act amends the Sex
Discrimination Act to place a duty on all public authorities,
including government departments, to promote equality between
men and women. We see the implementation of the Gender Equality
Duty (the GED) as a priority for the CSR and consider that the
action taken by government departments and agencies to fulfill
their obligation under the GED should feature ideally in departmental
PSAs, or at the very least, the gender PSA.
36. It follows that we see the CSR as the
vehicle for the WWC's recommendations on public sector pay. The
WWC recommended that:
The public sector pay committee gateway should
call all public services to account for how any proposed new pay
systems addresses all the causes of the gender pay gap which give
rise to costs in the longer term.
The public sector pay committee was set up to
ensure greater centralised control and co-ordination over public
sector pay deals—the Chancellor has set a target of keeping
pay rises to an average of 2.25%. The pay committee will assess
specific proposals for pay increases and changes in pay structures
against the government's pay objectives, and recommend to ministers
whether they should be approved. It will assess departments' pay
and workforce strategies and report to the Chief Secretary to
the Treasury. The aim is that "all significant pay decisions
should be signed off" by the committee. There is an obvious
tension between controlling levels of pay and implementing new
pay systems that deliver equal pay, which are likely to add costs,
hence the need for a strategic approach.
37. The WWC also recommended that:
HM Treasury should ask public sector employers
to account for the progress on equal pay during the comprehensive
spending review.
Progress towards the implementation of this
recommendation could be tracked through the departmental PSAs.
FUNDING THE
WWC RECOMMENDATIONS—THE
NSRF
38. In the EOC's response to the DTI consultation
on the proposed National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)
for the next round of ESF funding[28]
we pointed out that the work done by the WWC and the recommendations
on tackling skills shortages, taking a local approach to the matching
of skills and jobs and introducing measures to assist women to
return to the labour market, were highly relevant to the objectives
of the NSRF. We asked that these should be part of the NSRF framework.
We consider that gender equality should be embedded in the NRSF
at national, regional and local levels, but we also think that
the framework would provide a means for implementing those of
the WWC recommendations that relate to delivery at a local level.
CONCLUSION
39. The WWC has taken a long hard look at
women in the UK economy. Shaping a Fairer Future has found
that entrenched occupational segregation both reinforces and perpetuates
skills shortages, while a continuing gender pay gap underplays
women's contribution to UK productivity. Against this background
it is vital that the Government builds upon the momentum generated
by the report and acts upon the WWC recommendations. We look forward
to playing our part in that and in helping to sustain the necessary
action forward into the Commission for Equality and Human Rights,
because the important work on the implementation of the WWC recommendations
is likely to continue after the integration of the EOC in the
CEHR.
40. We would be happy to amplify our thoughts
in oral evidence to the Committee.
16 Britain's Hidden Brain Drain-Final Report, The EOC's
investigation into flexible and part-time and working, EOC 2005. Back
17
2Nelson, A, Nemec, K, Solvik, P and Ramsden, C (2004) The evaluation
of the Work-Life Balance Challenge Fund. London: DTI Employment
Relations Research Series No 32. Back
18
Nelson ibid. Back
19
IFF Research (2005) Flexible working practices. Report
prepared for the EOC and People Management. Back
20
Office for National Statistics (2005a) Labour Force Survey
Historical Supplement. London: ONS. Back
21
Holt, H and Grainger, H (2005) Results of the second flexible
working employee survey. London: DTI Employment Relations
Research Series No 39. Back
22
Government Actuary's Department (2004) Population by age last
birthday in five-year age bands. Back
23
Loretto, W, Vickerstaff, S and White, P (2005) Older workers
and options for flexible work. Manchester: EOC Working Paper
Series No 31. Back
24
EOC website. Back
25
Woodland, Simmonds, Thornby, Fitzgerald and McGee, The Second
Work-Life Balance Study: Results from the Employer Survey, national
Centre for Social Research, DTI Employment Relations Series No
22. Back
26
Williams, L and Jones, A (2005) Changing Demographics.
London: The Work Foundation. Back
27
Equal Pay Reviews Survey 2005, Adams, Carter and Schafer, IFF
Research, EOC 2005 EOC Submission to the Trade and Industry Committee
Inquiry/Women and Work Commission. Back
28
EOC Response to DTI Consultation on the EU Structural Funds Programmes
2007-13. Back
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