The results of the decomposition show that time out of the work place accounts for an increasing proportion of the persistent pay
18 Actual discrimination could be either higher or lower than this figure for a
MACRO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND 47
19 CSO (2003), Quarterly National Household Survey: Childcare, Fourth Quarter 2002.
gap between men and women. This suggests that interventions, which facilitate employment continuity and reduce the penalties attached to time out of the work force, are extremely important. Within the first category, the childcare commitments within the NDP are central. The availability of affordable childcare is an important element of women’s decisions to stay in the labour market when they have young children and on the length of time they stay out of the labour market (parental leave schemes and flexible employment are also central to this decision). Recent evidence from the CSO Quarterly National Household Survey suggests that average costs of paid pre-school childcare are still extremely high (€105 per week nationally, rising to €131 per week in Dublin).19
It is possible that some of the positive impact of ‘participation enhancing’ Measures, such as childcare, on the gender pay gap may not be seen until the medium/longer term. Barrett et al. (2000) argued that women in the labour market in the mid-1990s were a highly selective group and had more favourable characteristics than women outside the labour market. Therefore, if policy or economic changes encouraged women with less favourable labour market characteristics to (re)join the labour market the gender wage gap could widen in the short term. There is some evidence to suggest that this is why the significant increases in female participation in the labour market in the second half of the 1990s is not reflected in a reduction in the gender-pay-gap, which remained almost static between 1997 and 2000 (Russell and Gannon, 2002).
Actions to reduce the penalty attached to time out would include interventions that aim to re-integrate women returning to the labour market. Recent research (Russell et al., 2002) has found that returners experience downward mobility when they re-enter the workforce and are highly concentrated in low skilled and low paid jobs particularly in the services sector (e.g. cleaning, waitressing, sales assistants). The study also found that access to training or retraining for this group was extremely important, because of low average levels of initial training, to update skills and to improve self- confidence. A number of Measures in the EHRD OP include women returners in their target groups, including ESF Active Measures for Long-term Unemployed and Socially Excluded, Sectoral Entry Training-Cert, Back to Education Initiative, and Skills Training for the Unemployed and Redundant. It is important in this area that the pilot Gateway for Women Programme is implemented nationally as planned. Supports to assist women returners in training, including childcare and more flexible timetabling (e.g. part-time and night courses), should be extended to a wider range of programmes. While significant positive changes have been made in certain areas e.g. childcare allowance for FÁS trainees, this is countered by recent cuts in VEC funding for childcare for VTOS participants.
The unexplained residual in the gender pay gap is often used as an indicator of the degree of discrimination in the labour market. Although it is an imperfect measure, it is indicative of the proportion of the pay gap that is not accounted for by differences in men and women’s human capital (e.g. work experience, education). As such it is a matter of concern that this figure has increased since 1994, despite the introduction of new equality legislation. This finding underlines the need for the continued or indeed enhanced focus in the NDP on increasing equal opportunities for men and women. Activities within the Equality for Women Measures (in the EHRD, BMW and SE Operational Programmes) are important in this respect. Although the projects tend to be small they provide an important insight into the root cause of inequality and the lessons learned from these projects should be considered for mainstream programmes.
In addition to time out of the workplace, the bi-variate analysis suggests that the occupational and sectoral segregation of men and women is also a factor contributing to the gender pay-gap. Recent labour market figures (Hughes, 2002) suggest that the Irish labour market is still highly segregated by sex both horizontally (with men and women concentrated in different sectors) and vertically (with men and women occupying different levels within occupations/ organisations). There is scope for the educational and training policies of the NDP and policies that aim to enhance employment in different sectors (e.g. in the productive sector OP, the regional OPs, and the EHRD OP) to tackle this persistent segregation.
The unexplained pay gap is also likely to be linked to vertical segregation so there is a need to improve access to opportunities for advancement among female employees. This falls within the remit of the NDP programmes that train those already in employment. There is a distinct need to enhance the skills of those in low paid employment so that opportunities for upward mobility are improved and their longer-term prospects are enhanced. The current investments in employee training are small relative to the overall Employment and Human Resource Development budget and currently have a low level of female participation.20 There is a
need to re-target these schemes to ensure that they are reaching the appropriate employees (see social inclusion section) to focus more effort on improving the conditions of those in employment.