Abstract
Women Adding Value to the Economy (WAVE) is a partnership of activity involving Cardiff University, the University of South Wales, and The Women’s Workshop Project @BAWSO. The project is part funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) through the Welsh Government.
The aim of WAVE is to understand and recommend how to ‘interrupt’ the ways in which gender pay inequalities are persistently reproduced through occupational segregation in employment and self-employment, the ways in which ‘women’s work’ is contracted and the operation of pay systems.
The WAVE project provides a raft of interventions based upon the expertise of each sponsoring organisation in relation to occupational segregation - in employment (Cardiff University), self- employment (University of South Wales), and training (The Women’s Workshop Project @ BAWSO).
This report from Cardiff University provides for the first time a detailed gender
‘occupational mapping’ as a context for the partners’ work, by setting out how men and women in employment and self employment work in Wales by occupation, working pattern or contract type (full time and part time), and sector. The report also shows how much employees (not the self employed) are paid for their work.
The uneven distribution of jobs and working hours among men and women is significant in the maintenance of gender pay disparities, more so than gender pay discrimination (EFLWC, 2008). Measures to address direct discrimination in pay systems can be rendered ineffective when so few men and women work in the same occupations, jobs, grades or sectors.
Comparators can be hard to find. Hence the emphasis needs to shift our understanding to a focus on the value of the work undertaken, and how the gender of people doing it can have an impact on how jobs are valued.
This analysis is based on ‘pooled’ Annual Population Survey data1 . The ‘pooled’ yearly data was then averaged to provide sufficient sample sizes to produce reliable data in a small population area such as Wales. Averaging ‘pooled’ yearly data also flattens out any single year data anomalies.
This report is intended to serve several audiences. It is a resource document for our partners within WAVE, providing baseline data and analysis that may inform their work. It is also a resource for employers, stakeholders and policy makers, and our engagement with them. This is the first of our reviews of occupational segregation and pay disparities, and throughout the report, we indicate where further research, including decompositions, will build upon this initial analysis.
Employees and employers will also be able to use the data to compare their wages and salaries against median averages via the Equal Pay Barometer. Available as an online resource via the WAVE website, this tool provides all workers in Wales with the facility to compare median hourly, weekly and annual pay for their occupation, and others that might pay more, by gender and full and part time working in Wales. The Equal Pay Barometer can be accessed at: http://www.wavewales.co.uk
The aim of WAVE is to understand and recommend how to ‘interrupt’ the ways in which gender pay inequalities are persistently reproduced through occupational segregation in employment and self-employment, the ways in which ‘women’s work’ is contracted and the operation of pay systems.
The WAVE project provides a raft of interventions based upon the expertise of each sponsoring organisation in relation to occupational segregation - in employment (Cardiff University), self- employment (University of South Wales), and training (The Women’s Workshop Project @ BAWSO).
This report from Cardiff University provides for the first time a detailed gender
‘occupational mapping’ as a context for the partners’ work, by setting out how men and women in employment and self employment work in Wales by occupation, working pattern or contract type (full time and part time), and sector. The report also shows how much employees (not the self employed) are paid for their work.
The uneven distribution of jobs and working hours among men and women is significant in the maintenance of gender pay disparities, more so than gender pay discrimination (EFLWC, 2008). Measures to address direct discrimination in pay systems can be rendered ineffective when so few men and women work in the same occupations, jobs, grades or sectors.
Comparators can be hard to find. Hence the emphasis needs to shift our understanding to a focus on the value of the work undertaken, and how the gender of people doing it can have an impact on how jobs are valued.
This analysis is based on ‘pooled’ Annual Population Survey data1 . The ‘pooled’ yearly data was then averaged to provide sufficient sample sizes to produce reliable data in a small population area such as Wales. Averaging ‘pooled’ yearly data also flattens out any single year data anomalies.
This report is intended to serve several audiences. It is a resource document for our partners within WAVE, providing baseline data and analysis that may inform their work. It is also a resource for employers, stakeholders and policy makers, and our engagement with them. This is the first of our reviews of occupational segregation and pay disparities, and throughout the report, we indicate where further research, including decompositions, will build upon this initial analysis.
Employees and employers will also be able to use the data to compare their wages and salaries against median averages via the Equal Pay Barometer. Available as an online resource via the WAVE website, this tool provides all workers in Wales with the facility to compare median hourly, weekly and annual pay for their occupation, and others that might pay more, by gender and full and part time working in Wales. The Equal Pay Barometer can be accessed at: http://www.wavewales.co.uk
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Cardiff |
| Publisher | WAVE - Women Adding Value to the Economy |
| Number of pages | 63 |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2014 |
