From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: IPS:Labor:Women Getting Raw Deal (UK)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 22:17:53 GMT

    apart from italy, britain was the european country with the
    slowest rate of closing the gender gap for salary payments.
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    ''in britain firms have more controls and there is evidence that
    they use wage levels rather than productivity as a means of
    competition. this encourages the development of a low wage economy
    with poor productivity,'' writes dr. rubery.
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    the broader tale that these statistics tell is that britain is
    fast becoming a low-wage society; since 1971, women have accounted
    for 90 percent of the increase in the labour market, displacing
    1.3 million men from work, the report said.
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Topic 203       IPS:Labor: Women Getting Raw Deal 
hrcoord apc.labour       3:10 pm  Sep 10, 1992 
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From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord> 
Subject: IPS:Labor: Women Getting Raw Deal 

/* Written 12:17 am  Sep 10, 1992 by newsdesk in cdp:ips.englibrary */ 
Copyright Inter Press Service 1992, all rights reserved.  Permission to re- 
print within 7 days of original date only with permission from 'newsdesk'. 

Title: LABOUR: British women still getting raw deal, report says 


london, sep 07 (ips) -- seventeen years ago when parliament passed 
the sex discrimination act, british women thought they were about 
to get a fair deal in the employment stakes. 

what hard experience has however shown  is that for most women 
the situation has not improved -- that is market forces do not 
necessarily dictate equal pay for work of equivalent value. 

that's the verdict of the government-funded equal opportunities 
commission which published a report monday, criticising production 
strategies of british companies. 

the reasons for this, according to dr. jill rubery, author of 
''the economics of equal value'', are complex. she said it is a 
mixture of discrimination in the way jobs are graded and paid, 
continuing segregation by gender and the perpetuation of this by 
the different way that the labour market is structured for men and 
women. 

more specifically, women in britain are vulnerable because 
they are not protected by minimum wages or by the practice -- more 
common in the rest of europe -- of wage settlements agreed 
throughout an industry, rather than firm by firm. 

''in britain firms have more controls and there is evidence that 
they use wage levels rather than productivity as a means of 
competition. this encourages the development of a low wage economy 
with poor productivity,'' writes dr. rubery. 

in a selected european employment/pay league table, dr. rubery 
finds that britain trails belgium, germany, greece, france, italy, 
luxembourg and the netherlands, with british women in non-manual 
work earning in 1988 only 55 percent of what their male 
counterparts were paid. 

this, she says, ''suggests that a low value is attached to 
clerical work (in which most women are employed) in britain in 
manufacturing''. apart from italy, britain was the european 
country with the slowest rate of closing the gender gap for salary 
payments. 

not only are women in britain less protected by labour 
legislation, but taking their case to law under the 1970 equal pay 
act has proved quite difficult. 

''everyone is spending a lot of time, money and energy fighting 
for something that is their right but is not being delivered,'' 
says marie-louise makris, acting policy and outreach coordinator 
for the national alliance of women's organisations. 

disputes generally flounder on the difficulty of proving 
conclusively that jobs with different titles involve the same 
responsibilities and skills. (more/ips) 

labour: british women still getting raw deal, report says(2-e) 

labour: british (2) 

one of the cases currently being sponsored by the equal 
opportunities commission involves five female warehouse clerks who 
earn eight dollars less a week than male packers in the same firm. 

also, dr. pamela endersby spent six years trying in vain to get 
the courts to recognise that speech therapists, who earn 25,000 
dollars a year should be paid the same as clinical psychologists 
who earn 30,000 and hospital pharmacists, who earn 32,000. 

''we are ignored because we are women,'' said dr. endersby, 
pointing out that training for each profession takes the same 
number of years. by tradition, speech therapy is a female 
occupation. 

together with the erosion of the power of the unions by 
government policies, is the growth of the concept of ''performance 
related pay'', which, according to dr. rubery, effectively makes 
it even harder for the law to define the concept of equal pay for 
work of equal value. 

employers have proved very adept at getting around the 
legislation. in january, secretaries and typists working for 
lloyds bank were awarded an extra 4,000 dollars per year to bring 
them in line with male clerks. notably, the bank reorganised its 
staffing arrangements shortly after making its decision. 

'the spectator' magazine had worked out that if all the women 
in britain's banking system earned the same as male employees on 
the basis of the level of the job performed, the banks would have 
to find an extra 34 billion dollars a year. 

the broader tale that these statistics tell is that britain is 
fast becoming a low-wage society; since 1971, women have accounted 
for 90 percent of the increase in the labour market, displacing 
1.3 million men from work, the report said. 

on top of this, the number of women working part-time, with no 
job protection or additional benefits, has virtually doubled from 
2.8 million to 4.6 million over the same period. 
(end/ips/la/ma/cpg/92) 


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