International Women’s Day – highlighting business inequalities

A string of reports have been released to coincide with International Women’s Day, urging businesses to do more to diversify their workplace.

Several reports have been released this week addressing the role of women in the workplace in light of International Women’s Day, which is a celebration for women’s economic, political and social achievements. The British Council, the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU), the Institute for Fiscal Studies and PricewaterhouseCoopers have all conducted research to coincide with the day, revealing some alarming figures on the lack of diversity in British workplaces.

Women are struggling to progress

The PwC study revealed that women in the UK are less likely to be in work,  experience lower job security and greater pay inequality than their counterparts in other developed countries. The Women in Work Index revealed that Britain ranked a lowly 18th place out of 27 countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), based on five indicators of female economic empowerment.

There was a little room for optimism in this year’s report, with the UK making improvements on the majority of the indicators since 2000. However, this progress has been slower than other countries and has stalled since the start of the economic downturn in 2007.

Yong Jing Teow, author of the report and economist at PwC, said:“It is worrying that the UK’s progress in encouraging more women into work and closing the gender pay gap has all but ground to a halt since the recession hit. While most other OECD countries have continued to move ahead, our progress appears to have stalled.”

The Nordic countries were found to be home to the most diverse workspaces in the OECD, with Norway ranking first and Sweden and Denmark following close by. New Zealand ranked in fourth place and Finland followed in fifth.

Women leaders in higher education

A panel of education leaders speaking at Going Global 2013 in Dubai revealed that there was an alarming lack of women in higher education institutions throughout the world. The leaders have built on data collected through workshops in the Middle East and East Asia to compile a Manifesto for Change, which debates the consequences of women’s exclusion from mainstream knowledge production as well as ways in which the trend might be reversed.

The British Council research was presented by professor Louise Morley from the University of Sussex, who demonstrated that higher education was suffering from ‘absent talent’ as women are underrepresented at the more senior levels. The manifesto set out a number of actions for both men and women in the higher education sector under the themes of accountability, transparency, development and data.

First job pay

Research by HECSU has revealed that there is a ‘strikingly uneven’ balance between how much take-home pay male and female graduates earn, with females found to be paid between £15,000 and £23,999 and males earning salaries of £24,000 or more.

Analysing data from a study of 17,000 recent graduates called Futuretrack, the organisation found that men are ‘commanding higher salaries than women’, despite having the same number of UCAS entry tariff points.

Jane Artess, director of research at HECSU, said: “If we look at wages by sector, the male lead is persistent in the public and private sectors, in graduate workplaces and also in graduate and non-graduate job roles. The only area where female pay is equal to males is in the not-for-profit sector.”

Pensions

The final report released to coincide with International Women’s Day is one compiled by the IFS, which revealed the pension age for women is due to rise to 66 by 2020 as more females enter the workplace. According to the research, the change in pension age has led to more women seeking employment at a later age, and has prompted a change in culture both at home and in the workplace.