Nick Clegg has today announced a number of initiatives to make the world of work more “family friendly”. The right to request flexible working arrangements will be extended to everyone, and the government will implement Labour’s proposals to increase the amount of paternity leave available to new fathers.
I unequivocally welcome these moves. Equality is not just for women, and is not true equality until both genders feel able to make meaningful choices on how to raise their children and split other work involved in running a household, until they are truly supported in those choices by our society. Too many young couples find themselves in a situation where the man goes out to work while the woman stays at home with the children, despite never intending to have this lifestyle, simply because that is what the current parental leave system defaults to. There are other factors too, to which I will come later, but the parental leave arrangements play a significant role, and this is a big step in the right direction.
The reactions to these government proposals have, on the other hand, given us a glimpse into the kinds of challenges the government will face with the implementation of these plans – and the kinds of challenges that working parents face on a daily basis. The Daily Mail today takes the side of the Federation of Small Businesses, which is crying blue murder over the proposals. Difficult to administer, costs too much, makes it difficult to plan – these are just some of the objections the FSB is throwing at this. The Mail’s fix is the “free market”:
The motivation for Government meddling in this area is that men and women should be treated the same. They could achieve this objective much better by allowing a free market – the state getting out of the way and leaving employees and employers to negotiate their own arrangements. This would mean treating us as grown ups when we have children.
Quite how the author thinks allowing the free market to “fix” this would be any different from the situation before the introduction of maternity leave, or even the current situation which still sees most fathers not even taking the two weeks they currently have a right to is not entirely clear.
SkyNews quotes David Frost from the British Chambers of Commerce:
Many employers shy away from hiring women of childbearing age. Nick Clegg’s proposals might see employers avoiding recruitment of any person in their 20s or 30s, which would lead to an increase in the number of age discrimination claims and the burden of tribunal claims on employers.
This open admission that employers already discriminate against women of child-bearing age is, frankly, scandalous. Of course, perhaps someone should point out to Mr. Frost that, unlike women, men do not lose their fertility once they hit 40 or so – perhaps then businesses will stop employing men entirely.
Additionally, even if the proposals for increasing paternity leave are fully implemented, true equality is still a long way away. When Labour first introduced the plans, a YouGov poll showed that over two thirds of people would not take advantage of the extended paternity leave, the main reason cited being financial. With women still earning nearly 20% less than their male counterparts for the same job, this should hardly be a surprise.
Statistics show that women’s last pay cheque in 2010 might as well have been on November 2nd due to the gender pay gap, and that on average people in the UK don’t start getting paid again in 2011 until February 27th if we take into account all the unpaid overtime we work. For working women this is a spectacular double burden, which sees them lose out on around 4 months’ worth of income every year.
As parental leave is paid at a statutory £125 per week, few are the families who can afford to lose the bulk of the man’s income for 20 weeks. It is much easier for the woman to stay at home as her income is considerably lower already and thus less of a loss.
Yet the government is actively choosing not to address this issue, by deciding to drop the powers to mandate large private sector companies to conduct equal pay audits from the Equality Act. So what Nick Clegg is giving us with one hand, he is taking away with the other. If he and this government are truly committed to gender equality and family friendliness, I would strongly encourage them to reconsider their approach to the Equality Act and re-establish the powers with regards to equal pay audits. Until then, no amount of legislation will force true equality as financial necessity will always trump any legal rights.
FWIW, part of the inspiration for the policy idea (Jennie and I were part of the initial consultation that proposed it as party policy, it was broadly our idea) was to try to reduce (with the aim of eliminating) the known discrimination against younger women in the workplace.
Some of it is obviously deliberate, but much more is subconsious. If you’ve two equally able candidates, one has the potential to take maternity leave at some point soon, one hasn’t, some will, consciously or unconsiously, take the easy option.
Changing the situation so that men can take leave, and that it’s paid (two weeks off, unpaid, at one of the most expensive times of your life, perhaps doesn’t appeal to many) is also useful.
A large part of the gender pay gap appears to be, statistically, due to career breaks. IE, maternity leave. Give men that option, that part can be reduced. And hopefully, if the culture shifts, it will increasingly be the women who’re higher paid (it is in our household, I only work part time–£125 would be a pay increase for me currently).
Re the Equalities Act stuff–there’s nothing to re implement, the powers were never implemented. Featherstone took the decision not to make the audits compulsory yet, and to work on other methods initially, which is what the legislation allows for and Harman already tried.
Reading between the lines, the wording of Lynne’s statement appears to be “this was tried, but it was tried in a botched, bad way that wasn’t going to work, I’m not Harriet Harman”. That might be my interpretation but, to be frank, on equalities issues, I’d much rather trust Lynne Featherstone than Harriet Harman.
But yeah, a mixed bag, I’m, obviously, very happy to see my idea announced as Govt policy and getting positive press all over the place is rather pleasing. I’m not sure on the audits thing, at the moment, I’m trusting Lynne, she’s earnt that, from me.
I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree on Featherstone vs. Harman. I have a lot of time for the latter, the former as far as I’m concerned is an unknown quantity.
You are absolutely right that the conscious or unconscious discrimination exists (and the guy from the Chambers of Commerce admitted as much), and I’ve already said, extending paternity leave is a huge step in the right direction.
I’m not convinced that that in and of itself will fix the pay gap, not even the part of the pay gap that’s due to career breaks, simply because men will struggle to take their career break in the first place. All the data we have shows that they struggle to take the 2 weeks they’re currently entitled to – partly for financial reasons which will still be there, but partly also for cultural reasons and for fear of damaging their career. That’s not going to go away overnight.
Again, I fully support the paternity leave move, I think they’re going to have to do other things too (and Clegg has in all fairness said as much himself), and I do believe pay audits should be part of the package.
I love the David Frost quote. It’s basically saying, “But we discriminate against this group at the moment and it makes life better for everyone else. If we change things, then everyone would be in the same boat. Oh no!”
PJW
Well, quite. 😉