Women and Low Pay

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on securing this important debate on a subject that affects women in every constituency the length and breadth of the country, my own included. I intend to keep my contribution brief, focusing on low pay in Coventry and the impact on women locally.

Nearly one fifth of all jobs in Coventry, equivalent to 26,000 roles across the city, paid less than the living wage last year. The majority of those low-paid jobs are concentrated in sectors and roles within the labour market that are overwhelmingly dominated by women, such as care assistants, cleaners, caterers and those working in the leisure and service industry. Although we know those types of job are crucial and help to hold the fabric of society together, they are all too often part time and low skilled, with few progression opportunities.

[Mr Cunningham]

My hon. Friend will be as aware as I am that Coventry was one of the leading authorities in implementing the living wage. More importantly, she mentioned that carers are among the lowest paid. If a carer wants to go to a tribunal without trade union support—I have seen cases of this—on average it costs £1,200, and most carers cannot afford that. That is a direct result of this Government’s policies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Colleen Fletcher]

I agree with my hon. Friend on that point, which was also raised by our hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth.

As I was saying, although the types of job I describe are crucial and help to hold the fabric of society together, they are all too often part-time, low-skilled jobs with few progression opportunities, and are viewed and derogatively dismissed as “women’s work”. Consequently, they are undervalued and underpaid relative to comparable jobs in male-dominated sectors. As a result, low, unequal pay for work of equal value is the bleak reality for many of Coventry’s working women in this divided and divisive labour market.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that women in their 50s earn 18% less than men not only is an injustice for those women, but really reflects a failure of our society to harness all the expertise and knowledge of those women? That shortcoming as a society has an impact on our economy.

[Colleen Fletcher]

I absolutely agree with my hon Friend. I have had experience of that, and constituents have written to me about those very things.

One of the clearest examples of this inequity is the widening gender pay gap in the city, which last year increased to 16.2%, up from 15% the previous year. It reached an astonishing 20.6% in my constituency. That means that on average, women in my local area took home just 79p for every £1 earned by a man. That rising inequality and resultant deterioration in the financial position of women across Coventry is extremely worrying and wholly unacceptable in equal measure, but of course the most fundamental and obvious problem facing women in these less valued and less well paid jobs is their inability to earn enough to provide themselves and their family with a decent standard of living, and in some circumstances even to keep their heads above water.

We know that low income as a result of reliance on low-paid work and in-work benefits limits access to adequate housing, education and other services or facilities, as well as to essentials such as food, fuel and clothing. That socio-economic disadvantage is inextricably linked to the significant health and social inequalities seen in Coventry and in my constituency, which impact upon some of the poorest and most vulnerable of my constituents. That is why we simply cannot continue to allow less valued and less well paid work to be the fate of generation after generation of women. We need fundamentally to tackle the undervaluation of so-called “women’s work”, while simultaneously challenging gender stereotyping within the labour market, expanding opportunities for quality flexible and part-time working, increasing affordable childcare provision, and raising pay across the board, particularly within traditionally feminised work sectors.

Coventry City Council has taken a lead on the issue locally by becoming a living wage employer—like my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth, I was directly involved in that as a councillor some time ago. Such a move ensures improved income levels for a substantial number of low-paid individuals, the majority of whom are women. In addition, the council has also implemented a social value policy, which includes payment of a living wage as one of the criteria that the council will consider in its procurement process. That will benefit all workers on low pay, but particularly women, as they make up the majority of those on low pay in my city.