Women in the workplace: the gender pay gap remainsJune 18, 2004The British workplace has been increasingly 'feminised' in the past 25 years - but women still earn substantially less from their employment than men. That is the central finding of research by Keith Whitfield and colleagues, reported in ESRC's new publication Seven Ages of Man and Woman as part of Social Science week. Analysis of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey, a project, first conducted in 1980 and which has been repeated in 1984, 1990, 1998 and now in 2004, shows that: "¢ The participation in employment of women of working age has increased from 59% to 70% since 1980, almost entirely due to an increase in part-time employment. "¢ At the same time, women have made marked inroads into middle and senior managerial positions. "¢ This 'feminisation' of the workplace has been accompanied by a wide range of initiatives aimed at ensuring that women are neither discriminated against nor actively discouraged in their working lives. These include measures aimed at pay equality, managing diversity and improving the work/life balance. "¢ But women still earn substantially less - approximately 20% - from their employment than men. While the differences may vary, the pattern is consistent and unambiguous: women doing broadly comparable hours and broadly comparable work earn less than their male counterparts. "¢ Among full-time employees, twice as many men are in the top quarter of income earners as women. "¢ Women's earnings are considerably lower than men's in places that employ more women; women's earnings also tend to rise more slowly with age and experience. "¢ While wages are generally lower in occupations that employ more women, the negative impact on pay of working in such occupations is larger for women. "¢ The choices open to men and women are crucially influenced by recruitment and selection processes and these are not always 'gender-neutral'. "¢ The minimum wage has reduced the gender pay gap through its impact on part-time work, where women are disproportionately highly employed. | |||||||||||||||||||||
Science Research Departments
Earth Science Alternative Energy | Anthropology and Archaeology | Earthquakes and Volcanoes | Environment and Nature News | Global Warming | High-Energy and Particle Physics | Ozone Hole | Scientists Slow Light | Tsunami Space Science Astronomy and Space News | Black Holes | Chandra X-Ray Observatory | Extrasolar Planets | Hubble Telescope | International Space Station | Jupiter Galileo Mission | Jupiter Cassini Mission Flyby | Mars Exploration | Mars Odyssey 2001 | Mars Global Surveyor | Mars Polar Lander | Mars Climate Orbiter | Mars Pathfinder | Meteors and Asteroids | Mir Space Station | NEAR Asteroid Probe Mission | Pluto Planet Debate | Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Space Shuttle Program | Space Shuttle Mission: STS-102 | Space Weather Life Science Animal News | Biotechnology and Genetics | Brain Research | Human Cloning | Dinosaur and Fossil Discoveries | Endangered Species | Gene Therapy | Genetically Modified Food | Stem Cell Research | Whales and Whaling |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||