Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Fair Play South West

1. Fair Play South West (FPSW) is the Gender Equality Network for the south west of England, covering the rural counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall and major conurbations such as Bristol, Plymouth, Bournemouth and Poole.

2. We are an unincorporated network of women and women’s organisations, run by a committee of volunteers with secretarial and policy support from the equality charity Equality South West (see www.equalitysouthwest.org.uk).

3. Our work includes running information gathering events and conferences and providing a voice for south west women into policy and decision making organisations. This response is based on the body of knowledge gathered from these voices.

Do the Gender Equality Duty and the Equality Act go far enough in tackling inequalities, such as gender pay gap and job segregation, between men and women in the work place?

4. The Gender Equality Duty was replaced in the Equality Act 2010 by a duty covering all the protected characteristics. FPSW members were generally supportive of the General Duty in the Act but have been considerably disappointed by the significant watering down of the Specific Duties Regulations which were brought in subsequently. In some Public Authorities the good practice developed under the Gender Equality Duty has continued but in many there has been a loss of focus on women’s issues.

5. 1In the south west of England, the all-job median hourly pay gap between women and men varies between 10% in parts of rural Cornwall and 35% in the town of Cheltenham, for example. The trend is for the pay gap to be lower in areas of low GDP, where wages are low for both women and men, and higher in the relatively high GDP areas where it is clear that women do not benefit in pay terms from the better performing economy.

6. Though the figures for the pay gap are higher when comparing women in part time jobs with men in full time jobs (14% to 46%), there is also a gap between women’s and men’s hourly pay when both are in full time work (typically around 20%) so that the very large proportion (47%) of women working part time in the region does not provide the only explanation of the pay gap.

7. Furthermore, analysis of skills data by the SW Observatory for the SW Employment and Skills Board identified a significant under-utilisation of skills, particularly amongst women. This trend is confirmed anecdotally by women in our network who report difficulty in finding work for which they are well qualified which fits in with their family commitments.

8. The main issues which push women into low paid, largely low skilled, work are:

8.1Unavailability of conveniently located, conveniently timed, high quality, affordable childcare; the single most effective action by Government to improve the economic position of women would be the provision of full time subsidised childcare facilities for pre-school children and after school subsidised childcare for older children. Evidence for the importance of childcare can be found in a Bristol Fawcett report at http://www.bristolfawcett.org.uk/Documents/Economy/BristolCuttingWomenOut.pdf .

8.2Public transport not tailored to women’s needs; women have less access to private transport than men, particularly during working hours. They also often need to take children to school or childcare on the way to work, which may mean multiple bus journeys with time consuming transfers. In rural areas it may make it impossible to do other than a very local job. In cities it is often prohibitively expensive. An action by Government which would help would be to enable (or require) Local Authorities to ensure that public transport provision is equality impact assessed with proper consultation with local women so as to make it convenient and affordable for them;

8.3Uneven geographical availability of well-paid jobs; for many women it is important that they work close to where they live, or where their children go to school or childcare, so that they can be on hand in case of family emergencies.2 This puts an onus on planners and developers to think about the needs of women when deciding where housing and jobs are located and requires some creative thinking. The principles of social planning are not dissimilar to those of true sustainability in development and this aspect of Local Authority work should be more rigorously equality impact assessed than has been usually done to date;

8.4Unavailability of the option of part-time or flexible working in high quality, well-paid jobs; there is still a culture within many employers, particularly in the private sector, that senior positions cannot be part-time or done in a job-share, for example. Research evidence shows this to be a false assumption and the Government and Local Authorities could do more to publicise this. However, women tell us that there needs to be more stick as well as carrot, for example by requiring all employers to include equality data in their published reports and by establishing quotas for women in positions of power. The “right to request” flexible work has been only partially successful; there needs now to be a “right to work” flexibly so that employers cannot refuse.

8.5Undervaluing of work traditionally done by women; some of the low paid work currently largely done by women is highly skilled and very important to society and women suspect it is low paid because it is traditionally “women’s work”. Government action to help remove this anomaly could include raising the minimum wage to a decent living wage and establishing pay-norm-setting bodies which would recognise these skills (effectively a cross-employment equal pay evaluation).

8.6Inadequacy of information, advice and guidance to both girls at school and adult women about career and study options; we have put this issue last mainly because we believe that reducing job segregation is a long term solution and is unlikely ever to have much impact unless and until the first four of the issues above are resolved. It is well known, for example, that women engineers leave the profession at a higher rate than men at least in part because it is hard for engineers to find conveniently located well paid work matching their qualifications and experience, and even harder if it also needs to be part-time.

9. The Public Equality Duty and the Equality Act 2010 have the potential to have a big impact on the issues identified above. The Government and Local Authorities are required not only to eliminate unlawful discrimination but also to take positive action to remove disadvantage. In principle this should mean that the actions suggested above are at least considered and in many cases implemented to remove the barriers to women’s economic equality.

10. However, it is our experience that the Public Equality Duty is not being implemented as the law requires and that there is inadequate enforcement of the law on the ground. The EHRC, which is the enforcement agency established under the Equality Act 2006, was under-resourced and not well managed when it took over from the three previous enforcement agencies (for gender, race and disability equality) and has since been systematically undermined by resource cuts and too much Government interference in its activities. As an example, it is worth reviewing the EHRC report on its Section 31 investigation of the Treasury’s equality impact assessment of the Comprehensive Spending Review of 2010; from this it is clear that the Executive Summary had a different author from that of the full report written by the EHRC investigators.

11. At local level, “enforcement” is left to unpaid voluntary groups by challenging both the processes and the outcomes of decision making. This is both inefficient and in many cases ineffective as the voluntary groups have no powers and few resources. What is chiefly needed is for public authorities to understand both the legal requirements on them and the advantages to good decision-making of doing adequate equality impact assessment, including implementing adequate mitigating measures. In this respect, the Specific Duties Regulations brought in under the Equality Act 2010 are considered to be inferior to those brought in for the previous Gender Equality Duty and are wholly inadequate.

What steps should be taken to provide greater transparency on pay and other issues, such as workforce composition?

12. Good employers already publish information (for example in their Annual Report or on their website) on their workforce composition disaggregated by gender and grade. This enables existing employees to judge and challenge whether the recruitment, personal development and promotion practices are fair and tailored to the different needs and strengths of women and men. It also enables prospective applicants for jobs to take into account the equality performance of the employer before accepting the job. More importantly, it forces the employer to think about and continuously improve its equality practices to the benefit of its business.

13. Good employers also conduct equal pay analysis to identify areas where there may be inadvertent discrimination or bias in their processes and to correct these. Such analysis may or may not amount to an “audit”; our experience is that it needs to encompass pay gaps both within and between grades and to identify the causes of any uneven distribution of women and men between the grades. Crucially, it should also include any bonuses or other supplements and access to “perks” such as cars. Good employers share this information with staff and their representatives and/or involve them in the analysis and corrective action.

14. Unfortunately, the position of good employers is undermined by the greater preponderance of employers who see equalities as “political correctness” and the setting of standards by regulation as “red tape”. The voluntary approach to greater transparency has been tried for many decades and we support the use of legislation and regulation to speed up progress to good practice.

15. There are Company Law requirements on what is reported in annual reports and equal pay information could be readily added to these along with workforce composition. Equivalent requirements would be needed on public and voluntary sector employers.

Women in Politics and Power

16. Many of the policy and practice changes which need to happen if there is to be progress for women and work would be speeded up if there were more women in decision-making roles. Work by FPSW (across the region) and Bristol Fawcett specifically within Bristol suggests that the “power” of women is going backwards rather than making progress. For example, in the report http://www.bristolfawcett.org.uk/Documents/CountingWomenIn/TheRightManForBristol.pdf , it is pointed out that 14 out of the 15 candidates for mayor were male, 76% of all Councillors are male and there are several private companies with all male boards.

Other Questions

17. We consider that the above answers address the remaining questions in summary.

20 November 2012