Equality: Fair Work

Taking Fair Work Forward

Week 1: Gender pay justice and the EIS Pay campaign

Welcome back to Taking Fair Work Forward – a learning course on emerging issues, for EIS equality rep. In this course, we wanted to link in key learning on equality issues, with current matters affecting education.

In this week’s learning you will receive a foundation for understanding the relevance of gender equality today, in relation to pay justice. Gender pay justice is a key component of the current EIS pay campaign.

About this week

Gender pay justice is an important component to the EIS Pay Attention campaign.

In this week’s learning you will gain a foundational understanding of the relevance of gender equality today, in relation to pay justice.

This week’s expert is Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Trainer Ellie Muniandy

This Weeks Topics

2. The gender pay gap

What Causes the Gender Pay Gap

Learning points:

  1. The workforce in professions societally associated with women’s work, have a majority of women.
  2. Jobs associated with women’s ‘traditional’ role and unpaid work in the home, like cleaners, childcare and social care are all paid much less than jobs where men are in the majority, like finance or tech. This differential valuing of work shows how society devalues work associated with women.
  3. Women tend to bear the brunt of the cost of childcare. The high cost means there is often no financial incentive for women to go back to work after having children, because in some cases it would lose them money. Taking time out to be give birth and care for a baby, results in a loss in take-home pay as maternity leave does not correspond to full salary. For the birthing parent, usually a woman, becoming a parent therefore means a loss in earnings, but for the other parent, usually a man, the financial difference is minimal.

 

Reflective question: Can you think of three graduate professions that you would associate with a majority of women, and three that you would associate with men? What do you think they are paid?

The pay gap, on average, is over 10% in Scotland. This is because, when it comes to full-time work, the pay gap is 6.6%, but part-time working women earn 26.9% less than men working full time.

Though part-time working is usually presented, and thought of, as a choice, it is often the only realistic option for women, who bear the brunt of caring and domestic work and who are the vast majority of single parent households.

Pre-pandemic, across Europe, women worked 13 more hours a week unpaid and 7 hours less a week paid work, compared to men.  In 2021, the EIS issued our One Thousand Women’s Voices report found that 20% of respondents had main or sole responsibility for childcare and 58.5% had seen adverse impacts on their ability to carry out employment.

75% of part-time workers in Scotland are women, and the gender pay gap for women over 40 is higher than the national average reflecting the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’ – poor provisions for maternity paid leave keeps women at a disadvantage – as becoming a parent does not carry the same economic consequences for the parent who isn’t pregnant – who is usually a man.

How can the gender pay gap be eliminated?

Learning points:

  1. It is essential to have a clear and transparent process of promotion, to ensure gender-based equality monitoring can take place. These should take intersectional issues into account and also look at other protected characteristics.
  2. Workplaces should consider what support are offered to parents in relation to their childcare provisions, to ensure they can participate equitably in work activity.
  3. Employers should ensure maternity pay, paternity pay and paid parental leave meets the needs of employees and do not detriment women’s pay or promotion.

Reflective question: Given the gender differences in unpaid caring and domestic work and the impact of this for women, what are three things that you think would have to change in workplace policies to mitigate against this?

Archive Material

View our archived material on Fair-Work within Scotland’s education system

View Archive