Equal Pay Duty Briefing Note for the NHS CEHR - Cardiff University

Welsh Specific Equality
Duties
‘Equal Pay Duty’
Briefing Note
Dr Alison Parken. March 2012
(Version 2 - updated November 2012)
Date 2012
01443 233450
www.wales.nhs.uk/equality

Introduction
The intention of the Employment Duty in relation to pay is to begin to address the
underlying causes of pay disparities. The reasons for pay inequalities vary at the
level of the workplace and are often greater than the picture given by aggregate
data. Most importantly, it is employers who have the ability to collect and analyse
workforce data and the levers to change working practices. This briefing note
summarises some of the issues that lead to pay disparities and suggests further
sources of information.
The ‘Equal Pay Duty’
A listed body in Wales must collect and publish data, on an annual basis, the number
of people employed by the authority on 31 st March each year by protected
characteristic, and men and women employed by:
job
grade (where grading system in place)
pay
contract type (including permanent and fixed term contracts)
working pattern (including full time, part time and other flexible working
patterns).
Since it is unlikely that any public body has no gender pay gap, an equality objective
is likely to flow from the data gathering, in which case an action plan is also
required 1 .
How do pay inequalities arise?
Pay disparities result from a combination of differences in the ways men and women
are employed. These factors include employment segregation (by sector,
occupation, workplace hierarchy, contract type (permanent/casual, full or part time or
fixed hours), the undervaluing of ‘women’s work’, access to training and routes to
progression, the unequal division of labour between paid and unpaid work, labour
market structuring on the assumption of gender roles regarding childcare and adult
dependent care in the working age years, and pay discrimination.
In combination, these cultural factors combine with labour market systems so that
disabled people and people from some ethnic minorities can be clustered in low skill
occupations within organisations, even though many have qualifications that should
lead to skilled work 2 . Older people can suffer from performance stereotyping where
1 See the EHRC guide to the Welsh Specific Duties on employment and pay:
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/wales/publications/public-sector-equality-duty-in-wales/
2 See Davies, R., Drinkwater, S., Joll, C., Jones, M., Lloyd-Williams, H., Makepeace, G., Parhi, M., Parken, A.,
Robinson, C., Taylor, C., and Wass, V. (2011) An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in Wales, A report prepared
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their experience is no longer seen as relevant, while younger people can be viewed
as lacking practical skills and so find it difficult to gain experience.
Pay discrimination may be the least of the causal factors. The traditional, equal
treatment approach to discovering and addressing gender pay gaps requires
individual men and women to find comparators in their workplaces but as the
following aggregate, or whole economy figures show, when men and women are in
such different kinds of occupations and with different employment contracts,
comparison is difficult 3 .
Occupational Segregation
Table 1 (below) shows that management and professional occupations in
agriculture, manufacturing and construction are largely a male domain.
Table 1: Gender and Occupation in Wales, 2008
Men Women Total Women
as % of
total
Managers and Senior Officials – All
industries
111,400 62,800 174,600 35%
Managers and Senior Officials –
Agriculture, fishing; energy and water; 39,200 8,000 47,400 17%
manufacturing; construction
Managers and Senior Officials -
Distribution, hotels, restaurants; transport
and communication; banking finance and 72,300 54,800 127,200 43%
insurance etc.; public administration,
education and health and other services.
Professionals – All industries 87,800 70,500 158,300 45%
Professionals – Agriculture etc. 20,500 2,300 23,100 10%
Professionals – Distribution etc. 67,400 67,700 135,100 51%
Associate Professional and Technical
– All industries
79,300 93,500 172,800 54%
Associate Professional and Technical –
Agriculture etc.
16,200 6,500 22,600 29%
Associate Professional and Technical –
63,100 87,000 150,200 58%
Distribution etc.
Source: Annual Population Survey January 2008 – December 2008. Wales. NOMIS. Data Run:
195009, extrapolated 22/07/09. Numbers and percentages rounded up.
on behalf of the Wales Equality and Human Rights Commission, Cardiff: EHRC pp. 215
http://www.wiserd.ac.uk/research/completed-projects/inequality-in-wales/
3 Parken, A., Rees, T. and Baumgardt, A. (2009) Options for an equal pay duty in Wales, Cardiff:
Welsh Assembly Government pp. 36
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The figures show that men predominate as Managers and Senior Officials overall
and absolutely numerically dominate in industries such as agriculture, manufacturing
and construction. No women senior managers were recorded at all in the subcategory
‘energy and water’.
Men also dominate the category of Managers and Senior Officials within the large
‘services’ category (‘distribution etc’) but there is a near gender balance within the
Professionals working in ‘services 4 . However, of the 67,700 professional women in
Wales employed in this category, 57,500 or 85% were working within occupations in
public administration, education, health and other services.
In Associate Professional and Technical jobs, 62,500 of the 87,000 women in
distribution and other industries were again working within ‘public administration,
education and health’.
Overall, more women work in the private sector than the public sector but these
figures, showing the distribution of women’s higher grade employment by sector and
occupation, demonstrate the importance of employment in the public sector for
women. Indeed, research for the UK as a whole shows that is it only women working
in the public sector with higher education qualifications who continue to have career
and pay progression beyond the age of 35 (Hills et al 2010:388) 5 , compared to men
whose pay progression continues beyond this age, with lower qualifications, and in
all sectors.
Contract Segregation
A key factor in maintaining pay disparities is the distribution of part time work and its
association with low pay. Besides working predominately in different sectors of the
economy, variation in the ways men and women are contracted has a substantial
effect upon pay disparities.
Men hold 62% of all full time employee jobs in Wales, women hold 38%
(Davies et.al. 2011).
Women hold 79% of all part time employee jobs in Wales (Parken 2011)
The gap between men’s full time median hourly and women’s part time
median hourly is 34% (LFS 2009).
Women are the majority of those earning less than minimum wage and of
those earning less than £7.00 per hour (Parken 2009).
4 Table abstracted from, Parken, A. and Rees, T. (2011) ‘Economic renewal and the gendered
knowledge economy in Wales’, Contemporary Wales, Vol. 24, Cardiff: University of Wales Press
5 http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28344/1/CASEreport60.pdf
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58% of mothers / 90% of fathers of children under 5 are economically active
(32% gap) (Parken 2009).
Again we can see how individual pay comparisons are difficult when men hold so
many more of the total of full time jobs. Something more structural is happening in
the labour market. It is often assumed that women choose to work part time, this is
true of some women at some points in their working lives - at any one point in time
around 40% of part time workers have a caring responsibly. The Equal Pay Duty will
require employers to look at their employment data and ask questions such as: Why
is part time work offered as the only option in certain jobs for women, whilst flexibility
is gained from men in employment through shift-working and overtime (with
attendant pay benefits)? Contracting men to work part time is increasing. Data
collection and analysis is needed to reveal such patterns of change in working
practices and their impacts on pay.
A discussion about ‘choice’, human capital theory and part time working can be
found in the report ‘An Anatomy of Inequality in Wales’ (Davies et. al 2011, Chapter
7.4, p170). This report is a rich source of recent and relevant information. It shows
that:
‘… women in Wales face an above-average incidence of low hourly pay
(less than 2/3 of median UK hourly earnings): 26% for all employees in
Wales, but 32% for women). Part-time workers face an additional risk of
low pay. The probability of low hourly earnings is more than twice as high
for women who work part time (47%) as full-time (22%)’. (Davies et.al.
p.144) 6 .
Low paid part time work may also disproportionately be offered to women and men
from some ethnic minorities and disabled people, whilst older staff of either gender,
in higher grade jobs may find part time work is unavailable to them. Data gathering,
under the Equal Pay Duty, will enable employers to analyse how part time and
flexible working is distributed in their workplaces by protected characteristics.
Given the predominance of women employed in the public sector, and the
disproportionate distribution of women managers and professionals within the
occupational category of education, health and public administration, we would
expect small pay gaps in the public services in Wales. Unfortunately, the effect of,
contract segregation is also apparent in the public sector in relation to part time work
and pay.
Occupational and pay segregation in the Public Sector in Wales
6 Davies, R., Drinkwater, S., Joll, C., Jones, M., Lloyd-Williams, H., Makepeace, G., Parhi, M.,
Parken, A., Robinson, C., Taylor, C., and Wass, V. (2011) An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in
Wales, A report prepared on behalf of the Wales Equality and Human Rights Commission, Cardiff:
EHRC pp. 215 http://www.wiserd.ac.uk/research/completed-projects/inequality-in-wales/
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In Local Government in Wales:
‘….. men are just 28 per cent of the local government workforce but hold
44 per cent of full time permanent contracts .... women, are 72 per cent
of employees in total [in local government] but hold 56 per cent of the full
time permanent contracts. Women on these contracts account for only 36
per cent of women employed in local government. Overwhelmingly
women’s labour is contracted part time and particularly part time casual.
Women hold 86 per cent of part time casual jobs, and of all women
working in local government 60 per cent are contracted part time’
(Parken, Rees and Baumgardt 2009:9).
Table 2 (below) shows employment and pay data by employment contract for the
Welsh Public Sector as a whole. The data shows a disproportionate gender ratio of
full time jobs for men and a disproportionately high use of part time working for
women.
Table 2 – Employment by Gender Contract and Pay in the Welsh Public Sector
Source Table 7.1 (Parken in Davies et al 2011)
Men
Women
Employees Hourly
Earnings
Employees Hourly
Earnings
Full Time Perm 93,528 12.80 117,946 11.07
Part Time
8,732 8.06 65,313 8.28
Perm
Full Time
5,049 7.87 9,137 9.52
Casual
Part Time
2,197 7.30 8,288 7.05
Casual
Total 109,236 200,684
Women are two thirds of all employees in the Welsh public sector.
Men are 35% of total employees and hold 44% of all full time (FT) permanent
jobs.
Full time work accounts for 90% of all men’s employment.
Women are 65% of total employees but hold 56% of all FT permanent jobs.
Women hold 88% of all part time permanent jobs.
63% of women are employed FT, and 37% PT.
Women are 86% of the overall part time workforce, men 14%.
These working patterns contribute to an hourly median gender pay gap between
men and women on permanent contracts who work full time (excluding overtime) of
14% or £1.75 per hour. Between women, the difference for those on permanent full
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time contracts and women on permanent part time contracts is £2.79 per hour, or
25%. The gap between these part time women and full time men is £4.54 per hour
or 35%.
In qualitative research with a local authority, colleagues and I found that women
contracted to work 10, 14, or 18 hours per week often worked 21, 24 or 28 hours per
week (Parken and Baumgardt 2009) 7 . They received no overtime pay for these
additional hours as they didn’t exceed the bar for of full time working of 35 hours per
week.
Several of the women interviewed had, or knew of, women who had two or more
low-hours employment contracts with the same local authority. None of them had
caring responsibilities; several would have welcomed the option to work full time but
this was not available in their occupations. However, part time work wasn’t offered
as an option to their younger, more highly educated, supervisors who did have
childcare responsibilities.
This example shows where working patterns offer flexibility for employers but do not
work well for employees, as well as creating pay inequalities.
Conclusions
The equal pay element of the employment duty is designed to illuminate pay
disparities at the workforce level. It should begin to show taken for granted
stereotypes about the gendering of jobs and progression - at the workforce level
where changes can be made.
Employers will be able to look at the data gathered and then further investigate the
reasons behind how workplace systems and practices, and wider social and cultural
stereotypes, result the following kinds of outcomes:
occupational ‘clustering’ by protected group characteristic
pay disparities resulting from the way people are contracted to work. Can
fairer working patterns be investigated?
certain groups consistently working at grades below their qualifications level,
lack of part time and flexible working options in supervisory and management
level jobs, or only in certain clinical settings
lack of career progression.
These contributory factors in the creation of pay disparities will not be solved in one
round of reporting. Gathering and analysing the data, setting out what further
7 Parken, A. and Baumgardt A. (2008) The Business Benefits of Equal Pay: Local Authority Case
Study, Cardiff: Equality and Human Rights Commission Wales pp. 48
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esearch is required and setting an equality objective to diminish pay disparities, will
begin the process of ‘undoing-gender’ persistent pay gaps, one workplace at a time.
For more information, please contact us on 01443 233450
or www.wales.nhs.uk/equality
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Parken
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