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Labour market - gender segregation

Themistoklis

Hi Community,

What labour market data would you use to determine if an occupation operates in sexist terms?

What I have in mind is the risk of an equal pay claim for applying a market supplement (i.e. a temporary pay increase due to recruitment/ retention difficulties caused by the same job being paid higher elsewhere) on job A within an organisation, where this organisation operates a job evaluation scheme and where the job A that attracts the market supplement, under the job evaluation scheme, is 'rated as equal' with job B within the organisation, but the salary fails to attract or retain talent for the job A.

For example, where cleaners (for the sake of argument, mostly females), under the job evaluation scheme, are paid the same as caretakers (mostly males), awarding a market supplement on, one could argue that to award a market supplement on caretakers would bring a risk of an equal pay claim as the market is tainted by sex discrimination due to the gender segregation.

So, in other words, how would you determine whether the market forces that are used as an argument to award the market supplement are not in fact due to gender segregation within the occupation in question?

Many thanks!

(And apologies for the binary representation of gender; this is sadly in line with the current focus in the UK legislation.)

Themistoklis

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  • I think this is a really broad problem, and it's good to think about the underlying bias built into market factors rather than just labelling it a recruitment/retention issue and perpetuating a structure that discriminates. So I'd say you're absolutely asking the right questions.

    I think that if you have identified within your organisation that certain roles attract additional payments because of market forces and are also predominantly given to one gender, you need to see what else you can do about the issue. Perhaps that's targeted advertising, creating apprenticeships, reviewing barriers to applications etc. It might be that changes in the way you recruit/resource the roles could eliminate the need for the market supplement in time.

    Changing the broader market forces at play here is probably beyond the power of any one organisation, but changing your organisation's response to them can be done.
  • in reply to Nina Waters
    Quite Right Nina. However, as a first step it would be useful to look at the origins of any differentials and the size of the job samples in question. Over the years I've seen raw figures that suggested discrimination existed, but which upon closer investigation were (at least partly) explained by other factors...
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  • in reply to Nina Waters
    Quite Right Nina. However, as a first step it would be useful to look at the origins of any differentials and the size of the job samples in question. Over the years I've seen raw figures that suggested discrimination existed, but which upon closer investigation were (at least partly) explained by other factors...
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