The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) is inviting proposals from employers and partners about how to enhance opportunities for women in low paid sectors such as cleaning, commercial catering and adult social care.
The programme invites employer-led proposals to pilot innovations in designing good jobs for women which improve the content and conditions of the jobs they do as well as challenging fixed ideas about a job, the way it should be done and ideas about the person doing it.
As attention to job design can help make tasks, roles and skills more visible and valued at the lower end of the labour market, the Commission is particularly interested in innovations that might improve the position of women returning to work after a period of absence for maternity and childcare reasons and also for older female workers.
Women make up 50.3 per cent of the UK’s population of working age (16-64) and 47 per cent of those in work. But even in 2015 women do not enjoy an equal share of opportunities in and outcomes from the labour market. Latest data shows that the gender pay gap among all employees, full and part time, remains at 19 per cent. Women dominate in lower paid jobs, making up 64 per cent of the low paid workforce, despite their educational achievements. It has been estimated that failing to make the most of this female talent costs the UK economy between £15 billion and £23 billion annually. Correcting this failure could add 1.3 to 2.0 per cent to GDP every year.
Although legislation has made progress and policy developments will continue to be vital, the UKCES recognises that challenges around gender inequality are complex. Women struggle to make in-roads into male dominated occupations in IT and construction for example. Too few women make it to managerial positions. Too many women get stuck in low paid, poorly valued, part time jobs because they need to combine work and family responsibilities. Hence the reason that UKCES is focusing this programme on enhancing opportunities for women and their employers in parts of the economy where they make up a large share of a relatively low paid workforce.
Caroline Underhill of Thompsons Solicitors commented “This project is a real opportunity to improve working lives in the labour intensive industries of cleaning, commercial catering and adult social care. These are often lonely and undervalued jobs whose contribution to productivity is not recognised enough.”
To read the proposal document in full, go to: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/428907/15.05.20._UKFP_Comp_6_Brief_V4.pdf