Peggy Nuttall and Clare Spurrell

According to the government's Women and Work Commission, in the 30 years since pay discrimination was outlawed, women are still earning 17 per cent less than men, a figure which could potentially cost the UK economy 23 billion a year. In response to the commission's findings, the government has released new policies to tackle gender inequalities in pay, but will they be enough?

According to the Fawcett Society, under the current system it will be 80 years before women working full-time earn as much as their male counterparts, and 140 years before part-time female workers catch up with men. Despite girls consistently outperforming boys at GCSE, A level and degree, findings show that within three years of graduating women are earning less than men. In the UK, over half of all women are currently working jobs beneath their skills and qualifications.

Inequality starts in the classroom
According to the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) 15 per cent of young people in school are neither given advice nor encouraged into work experience placements in professions dominated by the opposite sex - with women often opting for badly paid careers such as nursing or teaching over science or engineering.

The government's response in schools is being praised by most, and involves introducing new schemes to give young girls better understanding of the wider choice of careers available to them, and encouraging them to consider work experience placements in more non-traditional roles.

Is the government missing the point?
More worrying is that female school leavers choosing 'women specific roles' - such as the caring professions - are being paid 17 per cent less than men in more traditional 'masculine roles' such as driving and building, despite both requiring the same level of skill.

The Commission's response to this seems to miss the point. Instead of closing the gap between wages of men and women in careers that require similar skill levels, the government is instead planning to spend £20 million to raise the skill level of women working in these roles, encouraging them to change careers altogether. This policy will only reduce the available 'woman-power' in these lower paid jobs. 'You can't simply try and persuade all childcare workers to become lorry drivers,' says Jenny Westaway of The Fawcett Society. 'What we have to do is revalue the kind of work that women are doing such as cleaning, catering and caring for others - we've got to value it more highly'.

'We are disappointed that Women at Work didn't back a compulsory pay audit.' says Westaway. 'This would require employers to look at what they're paying women and men, look at the kind of jobs and judge whether they are of equal value, making sure they are not discriminating either inadvertently or consciously.'

Children cost mothers more than fathers
Although women are less likely to ask for more money at work than men, a bigger factor to work inequality is children. According to the London School of Economics, mothers who returned to their previous jobs as part-timers quickly fell behind their male colleagues financially, and those that entered new jobs on a part-time basis did even worse.

According to the recent findings by the government's Women at Work commission, full-time working women currently earn 17 per cent less than men, but for part-time women this falls to 38 per cent, meaning that a part-time woman earns a mere 59 pence for every pound earned by her male counterpart. Considering that in 1975, when the Equal Pay Act came in, the part-time pay gap was 40 per cent, it's strikingly obvious that it isn't closing.

Currently, many companies still conform to 'stuffed shirt' policies that have no openings for part-time workers in senior positions. This is forcing a large workforce of highly skilled and qualified women with young children out of the boardroom, because they cannot deliver a 40-plus-hour week, and into jobs below their capabilities.

Multi-million pound plans are promised in the upcoming budget to provide women returning to work after having a child greater support, but many believe change must come from within. 'We want employers to be more imaginative about the range of jobs that can be done part time' Westaway explains. 'It might take some effort to get used to a new way of working, but there's evidence to show that this kind of working will increase retention and recruitment rates - it will pay dividends in the end.'

The Women at Work Commission, headed by Margaret Prosser, plans to change these attitudes at senior management level, by introducing a pilot project aimed at blue-chip companies to offer part-time senior management positions to women. They hope that this will prove flexibility at senior level will not lead to a loss of profit or productivity.

What can we do?
One American academic, Linda Hirshman, believes that women should take the matter into their own hands, offering a radical solution to ensure career success and achieve the 'have-it-all' lifestyle. She insists that women should shun creative, philosophical or arts-based degrees at university, and favour studying law and medicine - specifically plastic surgery!

Hirshman advises women to marry a man who is 'beneath' them (an artist ideally) and only have one child - if you must have any at all. This formula, says Hirshman, centres on the notion that the partner with the weaker profession (and salary) is more likely to sacrifice their career for the family, thus ensuring women bag a stay-at-home dad. Plus, one child is more manageable financially, professionally and emotionally, any more (according to Hirshman) is career suicide.

Fawcett are not convinced. 'We'd say Hirshman's solution is not our solution! But I think we're thinking of a common problem,' admits Westaway. 'First we've got to close the pay gap so there aren't different earnings within a partnership. We've got to encourage men to take on more caring roles and engage more with the work/life balance - allowing a more level playing field between the sexes at work'.

A more realistic solution may be to follow the employment practices of some of our European neighbours. By adopting practices such as requesting all employers with 10 or more employees to provide gender-divided wage statistics, develop equality plans, corrective measures and annual pay revisions, countries like Denmark and Sweden are way ahead of the game when it comes to the gender pay gap. Despite having the same levels of female employment as the UK, their pay gaps are far lower, and still reducing.

For more information on Gender pay inequality, visit www.fawcettsociety.org.uk

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