Women make up 65% of public sector workers. The loss of nearly half a million public sector jobs over the next few years with the Coalition Government’s cutbacks is set to affect women disproportionately. With the disappearance of public sector jobs with good terms and conditions, family friendly working and pensions, equivalent jobs will be hard to find in the private sector which has not adapted to the reality of women’s working lives and caring responsibilities to the same extent as the public sector. Parenting has a direct and dramatic influence on women’s employment prospects and pay which typically lasts a lifetime. Women undertake 70% of caring for elderly relatives and a quarter of women aged 45-60 become unpaid family carers.
The Women’s Budget Group published their Response to the Government’s Spending Review on November 2010. See what the cuts in public services and jobs will mean for Women at http://wbg.org.uk/RRB_Reports.htm
On 26 October 2010, the Fawcett Society published this Briefing for the Women’s Income Network -:
Fawcett Society
Impact of the cuts on women’s employment
- Government expects 490,000 public sector job cuts[1]
- This will impact heavily on women as around 40% of women in work in the UK are employed in public sector jobs[2], with women accounting for 65% of public sector workers[3]. In some sectors of the public sector women make up even greater numbers - for example women make up around 75% of the local government workforce[4], 77% of the NHS workforce, and 87% of primary school teachers.
- Job cuts will have a particularly adverse impact on those in insecure part-time and low-paid work. Women make up 64% of low paid workers[5] and more than three-quarters of all workers in part-time jobs.[6]
- Evidence is already showing that women’s unemployment is rising disproportionately: in the three months to July 2010, female unemployment rose by 50,000 to hit 1.01 million, but male joblessness was down 58,000.[7] In September 2010, 79% of those who signed on to unemployment benefit were women.
- The Institute of Personnel and Development reported on 22.10.10 that they believe up to 80% of those losing their jobs will be women[8].
Impact on BME Women
- Nearly half of all black Caribbean women, and 37% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, are employed in the public sector.
- Ethnic minority women will likely be hit very hard by the spending cuts and the 490,000 public sector jobs to be slashed – especially since a high proportion work in administrative roles. In addition, many black women are the sole earners in their household, so this could have a huge impact on their children and families[9]
Private sector ‘pickup’
- PricewaterhouseCoopers warns that almost half a million private sector jobs could be lost following the spending squeeze[10].
- Fawcett concerned that even if private sector does provide employment, which looks questionable, this move to permanently shrink the size of the public sector will jeopardise women’s employment opportunities as the private sector has failed to adapt to women’s maternity and care needs nearly as well as the public sector. Illustrated by (full time) pay gaps figures: 11.6% in public sector, 20.8% in private sector.
[3] UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey, April 2009 to June 2010
[4] Draft Local Government Workforce Strategy 2010, IDeA.
[5] IPPR, Working Out of Poverty: A study of the low paid and the working poor, 2008.
[6] TUC, Closing the Pay Gap: An Update report for the 2008 TUC Women’s Conference, 2008.