Essay Sample on Gender Pay Gap: A Historical Struggle for Equality

Introduction

House of Commons Women and Equality Committee (2016) defines the gender pay gap as an average hourly disparity between men and women wages, often expressed in terms of men's earnings if both workers are performing similar work. Smith (2018) refers to it as the disparity between what men earn on average when doing equal jobs (if men were paid equally as women would). Equal Pay Act was implemented in 1970 in Britain; yet pay discrimination remains rampant today with one in four companies and public sector organizations paying women 20 percent or less than men for similar jobs performed by women (Smith 2018). Only 1.5 percent of the companies recorded, paying male employees 20 percent less than female staff (Duncan et al., 2019). The process of bridging the gender pay gap has been lagging with a slight improvement over in recent years. In 2018, the gap reduced by 0.1 percent compared to the previous year, 2017, which had recorded 9.7 percent (Duncan et al., 2019). Individual organizations have been on the lead to achieve equality across all the aspects of their operations. The Labour Party, for example, has relatively improved in its trial to bridge the gender gap achieving a workforce that constitutes 237 women and 261 men, reporting a gender pay gap of only 3 percent (Duncan et al., 2019). The rhetoric that emerges is whether this prominent concern can be abolished to achieve a zero percent gender pay gap across the U.K. This paper seeks to explore neoliberalism's influence on the Equality Act and current studies on the abolishment of the gender pay gap.

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Neoliberalism and Equality Act

Neoliberalism is the policy-model directed to reform the economics of a country through deregulation, privatization, and liberation. Dalingwater (2018) defines neoliberalism as an ideology and policy market that promotes free-market competition emphasizing its value. The traditional definition of neoliberalism is the system of economic and political ideas that focus on the privatization of property, regulation of the economic policies, and the extension of liberal ideas like religion, education, and healthcare to diverse people in the society (The Week, 2018). In a broader sense, from several definitions, there is a consensus of facts in that neoliberalism emphasizes minimal government intervention, free-market, and capitalization. From a historical perspective, neoliberalism first emerged in the 1930s in a discussion that brought together 26 economists and liberal thinkers in a conference at Walter Lipmann but later adopted as government policy in the 1970s in the U.K. (Henry, 2010). This led to a broad range of reforms, especially in organizations aiming at reducing spending and entitlement to achieve efficiency and competition in all sectors to ensure user satisfaction.

Neoliberalism had a myriad of effects on the labour market since 1979, considering the reforms of deregulation, privatization. The reduction of welfare programs was evident, lowering the unemployment benefits and installed stricter procedures of claiming the benefits, with the programs introduced after 1998 seem to align with the neoliberal rationality (Jessop, 2003). Neoliberalism led to the marginalization of collective bargaining and casualization of jobs, which impacted the declination of high-paying and permanent jobs. Conversely, the jobs lacked social status, lowered the pay, and were less stable, increasing the competition among the workforce, which reduced pressure on wages (Jessop, 2003). Neoliberalism let to the occupancy of more men than women in senior roles in most of the organizations has hindered the reduction of gender pay gap statistics. Generally, in many workplaces across the world, the men holding senior positions outnumber their female counterparts (Petter, 2020). Contrastingly, women tend to hold junior positions that have significant low remuneration, thus affecting the gender pay gap negatively (Gascoigne, n.d.). In a work environment, there is an existing notion that senior positions require long hours and constant availability thus turning to be problematic to women who can only work on a part-time basis due to the need to accomplish the household responsibilities as well as care for the children (Olsen et al., 2014). The notion capacitates men to occupy more senior positions and focus on work, not to mention the globalization and technology issues, which have led to the extension of working days to 10 and 12 hours (Gascoigne, n.d.).

The introduction and adoption of the neo-liberal model as the central government's policy have formed the basis for many research work, especially those investigating the neo-liberal policies' effects on women and the Equality Act. The researchers have expressed their perspectives and standpoints where some argue that market liberalization empowered women, which resulted them level similarly as their male counterparts through increased trade, which created more jobs and other opportunities for women, thus actively contributing to their wealth.

Based on the assumption, women empowerment capacitated their growth rather than carrying out household responsibilities and house chores that limited them to stay indoors. Other authors argue that neo-liberal policies transformed social women empowerment into self-improvement movements that are less effective, thus promoting individualism. However, one of the globally accepted definition from the World Bank expresses women empowerment as the process of enhancing individuals or a group's capability to help them make more purposive choices as well as transforming the choices into desired and productive outcomes (The World Bank, 2017). Feminists have a different view where they consider the effort of changing and challenging the existing behaviour and norms to support women's development (Sen, 2019).

Neoliberalism has changed the old institutions that supported women's equality outcomes to a more flexible economy that eliminated women. Generally, neoliberal policies changed the overall attitude towards inequality in the U.K., where gender equality has consented as a political priority in the current era rather than a government policy (Dalingwater, 2018).

The Equality Act emphasizes women's participation, occupation, and other prospects. In this section, we will focus on the effects of neoliberalism on the mentioned aspects basing our discussion on the U.K. (Dalingwater, 2018). Neoliberalism's influence on the Equality Act is apparent since there were reduced welfare benefits like childcare and country's tax benefits, thus reducing the participation of mothers in the labour market. Institutions that provide for maternal support for mothers assists in limiting women from taking breaks from the labour market or taking part-time jobs that are degraded and low paying. Organizations with day-care facilities support a high rate of employment, especially for women with little children.

Neoliberalism's Influence on the Gender Pay Gap

Due to neoliberalism, giving birth and parenting is perceived as an individual choice in the U.K. Therefore, the government does not shoulder the responsibility for providing care facilities at affordable rates so women can easily gain access to better-paying work opportunities. Therefore, mothers are forced to find child care at market prices; in the event that they cannot afford these services they are forced to withdraw from labour market activities altogether. The privatization of childcare has resulted to mothers taking up part-time jobs, a discontinuous pattern of work due to breaks to care for the children, and increase in low wages especially for those who with low educational levels, as well as those who unprivileged to have maternity leaves (Rottenberg, 2018). The caring responsibilities and part-time roles are unequally shared, leaving women primarily responsible for domestic works and providing care for the children. Arguably, the household duties inhibit women from exploring better career opportunities, thus landing to part-time jobs, which are much flexible (Olsen et al., 2014). In this case, the women become disadvantaged since most of the part-time jobs are below their skill level, lack social status, and have minimal opportunities for progression (Gascoigne, n.d.). The gender pay gap tends to widen after childbirth, when women focus more on providing care than work. By the time their firstborn reaches 20 years, estimates show that women's hourly pay is about one third lower than men (Gascoigne, n.d.). This factor accounts for over half of any gap that exists between part-time and full-time employment rates. It is assumed that women position themselves in part-time jobs by choice regardless of them being naturally less senior and downgraded, hence receiving lower earnings (Gascoigne, n.d.). Women's chose to work in low-paid jobs and sectors that require traditional skills like nursing, caring, shop attendants, and front office workers who are termed as feminine. At the same time, men go for more complex skills like engineering, surgery, or construction (Gascoigne, n.d.). The women's traditional skills tend to be undervalued, thus the low earnings. However, it is perceived that women chose low-paying occupations because they offer more flexibility (Gascoigne, n.d.).

Neoliberalism in the U.K. increased female participation at large were single-person households led to the formulation of government policies that supported mothers to work in the 1990s, thus shifting from welfare to workfare programs. To receive the benefits, people were forced to work and take up responsibilities. The Conservative government introduced the workfare programs in the 1980s, but full implementation was executed by the New Labour Government between 1997 and 2010, thus increasing participation in the labour market. As mentioned earlier, other government legislation like the Equal Pay Act of 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1974, and Employment Act of 1982 (EHRC, 2018)were effective policies introduced by neoliberalism and reduced discrimination of women in terms of pay, and employment opportunities in the work environment.

Occupational Segregation and its Contribution to the Gender Pay Gap

Neoliberalism promoted horizontal segregation, which occurs in two forms, women clustering in low paying jobs, and males and females being assigned different tasks even at similar occupational levels (Dalingwater, 2018). Occupational segregation is the inequality distribution of males and females across different job types (Close the Gap, 2013). Although incremental participation for women has been achieved, segregation is still prevalent across the U.K., which can be directly linked to the gender pay gap. The case is evident in other countries as well, impacting the increased feminization of several sectors like nursing and education, which are referred to as pink-collar professions. In Britain, occupational segregation and gender bias are prevalent with the study findings indicating that women preferred service and educational occupations or the 3Cs- caring, clerking, and cashiering. In contrast, men preferred skilled trade occupations, which tend to reward better (Dalingwater, 2018).

For better understanding, segregation can be demonstrated from a school environment, where generally girls outperform boys in reading. But the society has a notion that mathematics and sciences are male work, and the idea extends to employment opportunities where females who study STEM subjects are likely to land on physics or engineering jobs. In other words, women who study STEM subjects are less likely to pursue science careers compared to the males (House of Commons Women and Equality Committee, 2016). However, we cannot conclude horizontal segregation to be the only cause of the gender pay gap; to some degree, it has promoted it.