Examination of Witnesses (Questions 55-59)
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
COMMISSION (EOC)
25 APRIL 2007
Q55 Chairman: Welcome. We are very pleased
to see you. My apologies for the slight delay in starting but
we are very pleased to welcome you here. The Women and Work Commission
report is a very important report and we are very keen to make
sure that there is progress as a result. You are obviously one
of the key organisations we wish to see, both in terms of your
input to it and in terms of what happens next and where we go
from here. Maybe you could start by introducing yourselves.
Ms Ariss: I am Amanda Arris and
I am Head of Policy and Research at the Equal Opportunities Commission.
Ms Wild: I am Sheila Wild. I am
Director of Employment Policy at the Equal Opportunities Commission.
Q56 Chairman: Let us start off straightforwardly
with the report. It made 40 recommendations. Which do you think
are the most significant for tackling gender inequality in the
workplace, and why?
Ms Ariss: We feel that they are
really important as a package. We have tried to resist cherry-picking
the things that we think are the best because in order to tackle
the pay gap issues action is needed on so many fronts and, as
the Commission concluded, the problem is very complex and the
causes of the pay gap are interrelated, therefore you need a number
of actors—government, employers, trade unions and others,
and indeed, a number of parts of government—to act together.
We have come to resist saying there are particular bits we think
are more important than others in general but there are some parts
that we would like to highlight. One is the recommendations about
tackling access to quality part-time working. The Women and Work
Commission's conclusions there very much chime with the EOC's
conclusions that the lack of access to quality part-time working
is a really fundamental obstacle to progress because the overwhelming
majority of part-time workers are women and they are mostly opting
for that part-time work in order to balance family and work responsibilities
and, with some exceptions, it is still extremely difficult to
get part-time work that matches people's skills. We have identified
that there are about 6.5 million people who are currently working
below their skill level in the economy and in many cases that
is because they cannot get part-time or flexible work that matches
their skill level and that is obviously a huge problem for those
individuals in that they are not able to progress, they are earning
less than they otherwise would, but it is a big problem for the
economy and for employers because people have skills, investment
has been made in those skills by government and by employers,
and those skills are not feeding through to people working in
jobs that are commensurate with them. So we highlight the recommendations
about access to quality part-time working. We would also highlight
the recommendations around the Low Pay Commission and the National
Minimum Wage, which have played a very important role in the progress
that has been made in the last five to ten years in closing the
pay gap and it is really important to build on that. Lastly, we
would also highlight the recommendations around the public sector,
in particular how the new duty on public bodies to eliminate discrimination
and promote gender equality might impact on the pay gap. Since
the Women and Work Commission made those recommendations the Government
have brought forward more detailed regulations about how the Gender
Equality Duty will work and although it is the Government that
sets the framework for that, it is the EOC that is responsible
for promoting that and ultimately monitoring and enforcing it.
We think if that framework that has been put in place works, if
public bodies respond to the challenge, that could be very powerful
because of what the Gender Equality Duty requires public bodies
to do. They should be setting a specific objective to tackle the
causes of the pay gap, not just pay discrimination but all the
causes of the pay gap, and it requires them, if they need to do
that, to set an objective and then to take action to achieve that
objective. They have got to take that action; they cannot just
public an action plan and say, "We are not going to do it
because we have changed our minds." Once people have committed
themselves to action, the legal framework of the Gender Equality
Duty does require them to take that action. It is quite a strong
lever for change that has been created there and we would say
that is a particularly important area to be followed up.
Q57 Chairman: Thank you very much.
I think we might come back to the Gender Equality Duty later on
because it clearly is important. On the first point you made about
the access to quality part-time jobs, do you have one or two specific
things you think could really make an "in" on that that
you would particularly like to highlight out of the report or
your own experience?
Ms Ariss: The Commission recommended
a very substantial initiative. The Women and Work Commission recommended
that there should be an initiative with a budget of £5 million
to develop models of how part-time working at middle management
and senior levels could be expanded. We very strongly support
that and we were disappointed to see that the initiative that
has been brought forward so far is on a much reduced scale, I
think £500,000, so only a tenth of what was recommended is
being invested. That approach of developing very practical ideas
about how to make it work and doing that with employers is a good
approach, but we do not think it is being done on a sufficient
scale.
Ms Wild: I think extending the
right to request flexible working to all employees is absolutely
central to opening this up. It gets women off the "mummy
track". What has been done around the right to request is
absolutely superb. It is beginning to change things but at the
same time it has highlighted how strong the appetite for further
change is and it is so much more helpful, not just for employees
but also for employers. If everyone is flexible, it is easier
to meet the needs of a business, and opening it up in that way
we think would certainly help to open up more senior levels.
Q58 Chairman: You have said it is
an overall package and we also know that the whole area all of
gender equality is incredibly difficult because it requires massive
cultural change tying into the practical issues. I do not know
if you would like to comment on that and also in terms of making
some impact into that cultural change. You have mentioned some
items but are there any that you might be able to see as potentially
easy wins to get us going and make people think we are motoring
ahead?
Ms Ariss: I think you are absolutely
right that that long-term cultural change is essential. It is
difficult; we would not want to suggest for a minute that this
is an easy thing to do. In terms of what could drive that long-term
cultural change, I think we would identify five elements, not
all of which we think are really properly in place at the moment.
All of them could be. The first element is really strong and strategically
well-thought-through leadership. This is something that really
has to be led strongly by government but also, when the EOC hands
over its responsibilities to the new Commission on Equality and
Human Rights, we will need to see them taking a very strong role
as well in support of this agenda. So leadership is the first
thing we would identify as absolutely essential to success for
long-term cultural change. The second element is employers really
taking the initiative. We recommended to the Women and Work Commission
that there should be some new requirements on employers. They
did not in the end go with that recommendation but they have thrown
the gauntlet down to employers to take action voluntarily, and
that is absolutely essential if there is going to be change. There
is so much that employers can do and indeed, that good employers
are already doing but there are far too many who are either doing
little or nothing and are thus failing themselves to reap the
benefits. So there is a leadership challenge for employers and
employers' organisations as well. The third element we would identify
is about management training and education. In every investigation
that the EOC has carried out into workplace issues in the last
three or four years we keep finding the same issue, which is that
managers, particularly middle managers, lack the training, the
education and the awareness to manage in the way that will be
needed for organisations to be successful in the future; that
our middle managers are under-skilled compared with our competitors
and compared with what is needed. Management training and education
is a rather unglamorous issue but it is fundamental to making
real, sustained, long-term change that would benefit not just
in this area around equality but much more broadly in the workplace.
So management education is the third area. The fourth thing that
we see as really important for long-term cultural change is getting
the law right. There is a lot that does not work about the Equal
Pay Act at the moment. It is cumbersome; it is focused around
individuals and not systemic change. What we would like to see
is a new legal framework where we have a single Equality Act that
brings together all the existing legislation, that is much easier
to use, where the intended outcomes are much clearer and which
has a much stronger focus on institutions taking actions to tackle
problems rather than waiting for individuals to complain after
something has gone wrong. So updating and organising the law is
the fourth area. The fifth is actually about the broader support
there is for long-term cultural change. We have been very encouraged
that there has been quite a lot of warmth towards the Women and
Work Commission recommendations from different parties, from employers,
from unions and there is some degree of cross-party support and
encouragement of change in this area. We think that is really
important for long-term change. That will not happen if it is
so closely associated with individual politicians or individual
parties that political change reduces that momentum. That is what
we think is needed in terms of long-term cultural change. That
was rather a long answer, and you did ask us about quick wins
as well.
Q59 Chairman: If you have any quick
wins, you can give them to us as we are going through the evidence.
Ms Ariss: Sheila, would you like
to pick up on any of that?
Ms Wild: Some of the quick wins?
Yes, I have already mentioned one of them, which is extending
the right to request to all workers. Supporting women entrepreneurs,
which I know the Government is just doing—Margaret Hodge's
initiative on that is very welcome. That is important not only
in its own right but that is also going to increase the number
of women in decision-making in business. That can only help to
speed things up. Thirdly, providing HR support for small businesses,
which relates to the point Amanda was making about the need for
management training. We have found in several of our investigations
that there is really a need for one-to-one HR support for small
businesses but looked at from the perspective of their business.
So if you have someone who is pregnant and it is the first time
you have ever had to manage a pregnant employee, having someone
to turn to that you can talk to, someone who will help you take
a longer term perspective and talk you through in business terms
is going to be very helpful. Even in medium-sized businesses one
has to recognise that human resource issues, people management,
are being devolved down to the line managers and line managers
do not necessarily actually have the experience in people management.
So if we want them to start managing diversity issues, we have
to increase the people management component of management training.
I think that can be a quick win. There are ways of doing that.
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