Women and Low Pay

269 Pages·1980·20.04 MB·English

by  Peter J. Sloane (eds.)

WOMEN AND LOW PAY
Also by Peter J. Sloane
SEX DISCRIMINATION IN THE LABOUR MARKET (with
B. Chip/in)
CHANGING PATTERNS OF WORKING HOURS (Department
of Employment Manpower Paper no. 13)
WOMEN AND
LOW PAY
Edited by
Peter J. Sloane
M
Introduction and editorial material © Peter J. Sloane 1980
Chapters 2-6 inclusive © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1980
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1980978-0-333-26817-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1980 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the World
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Women and low pay
1. Wages - Women
I. Sloane, Peter James
331.4'2 HD6061
ISBN 978-1-349-04715-4 ISBN 978-1-349-04713-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04713-0
Contents
Preface VII
Notes on the Contributors Vlll
Introduction P. J. Sloane
2 Low Pay amongst Women-the Facts P. J. Sloane and
W. S. Siebert 9
3 Relative Female Earnings in Great Britain and the Impact of
Legislation B. Chip/in, M. M. Curran and C. J. Parsley 57
4 The Structure of Labour Markets and Low Pay for Women
P. J. Sloane 127
5 Low Pay and Female Employment in Canada with Selected
References to the USA M. Gunderson and H. C. Jain 165
6 Shortcomings and Problems in Analyses of Women and Low
Pay W. S. Siebert and P. J. Sloane 222
Index 253
v
Preface
In its terms ofreference of22 June 1976 the Royal Commission on the
Distribution of Income and Wealth was instructed by the Government
to analyse the current situation with respect to low incomes in respect of
individuals, households and families. It was also to consider past trends,
particularly over the previous five years, in such incomes and the
economic, social and other factors giving rise to them. The Commission
duly presented its findings in Report no. 6, Lower Incomes, Cmnd.
7175, May 1975. In order to assist it in this task the editor(togetherwith
his associates) was invited to prepare a number of papers relating to the
distribution of female employment incomes falling below the level of the
lowest decile of the distribution for full-time manual men. The five
papers contained in the book represent the results of this work, suitably
revised for publication and taking into account the comments of the
staff of the Commission. We are grateful to the Commission for giving
permission for the publication of this material, but would stress that the
contents are the responsibility of the authors and should not be taken to
reflect either the views of the Royal Commission or those of individual
members of its staff. I am also grateful to Jean Beggs for typing
assistance and Lucy Docherty for help in preparing the index.
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have
kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: George Allen
& Unwin (Publishers) Ltd. for the table from Labour Markets Under
Different Employment Conditions by D. Mackay; The Controller of Her
Majesty's Stationery Office for statistics from HMSO publications;
Southern Economics Journal for data from Southern Economics
Journal, 1973; The University of Chicago Press for data from the table
by Leibowitz 'Home Investments in Children' in Journal of Political
Economy, 1974; The University of Wisconsin Press for data from the
table in Journal of Human Resources(© 1975 by the Regents of the
University of Wisconsin); and John Wiley & Sons Inc for data from the
table by Parsons 'Intergenerational Wealth Transfers and the
Educational Decisions of Male Youth' in Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 1975.
November 1978 P. J. SLOANE
vii
Notes on the Contributors
P. J. SLOANE is Professor of Economics and Management, Paisley
College, Scotland, having formerly held lecturing posts at the
University of Aberdeen and the University of Nottingham. In 1973-4
he was seconded to the Department of Employment's Unit for
Manpower Studies as economic adviser and in 1978 was Visiting
Professor in the Faculty of Business, McMaster University, Canada, on
a Commonwealth Fellowship. He has acted as consultant to the
National Board for Prices and Incomes, Commission on Industrial
Relations, Office of Manpower Economics, Social Science Research
Council, Commission of the European Communities, International
Labor Office and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development. He is co-author (with B. Chip lin) of Sex Discrimination in
the Labour Market (Macmillan, 1976) and in addition to various papers
on labour market discrimination his publications encompass the areas
of wage drift, the economics of professional team sports, real and
money wages, patterns of working hours and manpower policy.
B. CHIPLIN is Lecturer in the Department of Industrial Econ
omics at the University of Nottingham. During 1978 he was a
Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics, State University of
New York at Buffalo. His publications include: (with P. J. Sloane) Sex
Discrimination in the Labour Market (Macmillan, 1976); (with D. S.
Lees) Acquisitions and Mergers: Government Policy in Europe (1975);
and papers in the American Economic Review, Economic Journal,
British Journal of Industrial Relations, amongst others. He has acted as
consultant to a number of government institutions and private
organisations.
M. CURRAN is now a Research Fellow in the Department of
Sociology and Social Administration, University of Durham, engaged
in a study of the inner city labour market. She was previously a research
assistant in the Department of Industrial Economics, University of
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Nottingham on an SSRC project concerning sex discrimination and
female employment.
M. GUNDERSON is Associate Professor of Economics, University of
Toronto, Center for Industrial Relations, Faculty of Management
Studies and Scarborough College. He is a graduate of Queens
University, Kingston, Ontario and the University of Wisconsin,
Madison. He has published extensively on the labour market behaviour
of women, manpower training and the impact of institutional con
straints on the labour market.
H. C. JAIN is Associate Professor, Faculty of Business, McMaster
University, Hamilton, Ontario. In 1975 he was a member of the Equal
Value Committee of the Ontario Ministry of Labour. He was previously
a Research Consultant with the Canada Department of Labour,
Director of Research for the Nova Scotia Department of Labour and
Research Assistant with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He
has published many articles on the subjects of manpower resources,
manpower policy and planning, pay and employment discrimination
and industrial relations and is the author of Contemporary Issues in
Canadian Personnel Administration ( 1974).
C. J. PARSLEY currently holds a visiting position in the Department of
Economics at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He pre
viously held a temporary post in the Department of Economics, Queen
Mary College, London after working as a research assistant in the
Department of Industrial Economics, University of Nottingham on an
SSRC project on sex discrimination and female employment.
W. S. SIEBERT is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Stirling.
He holds degrees from the University of Cape Town and London
School of Economics and has held lecturing posts at the University of
Birmingham and Paisley College. He has published articles on discrimi
nation and occupational licensing and is co-author (with J. T. Addison)
of The Market for Labor: An Analytical Treatment (1979).
1 Introduction
P. J. SLOANE
There are several reasons why it is informative to examine low pay in the
context of female employment. First, there is the fact that, whatever
definition of low pay one cares to adopt, women as a group predominate
amongst this category of worker. This in turn means that any policy
designed to improve the situation of the low paid worker is likely to have
a disproportionate effect on the female workforce. Secondly, concern
over problems of inequality of opportunity for the growing female
labour force has led to the introduction in Britain, following the North
American legislative pattern, of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 and the Sex
Discrimination Act in 1975. Examination of the most disadvantaged
section of the female labour force might, therefore, highlight problems
relating to the adequacy of this legislation and equally enable some
judgement to be made over the potential of such measures for reducing
the numbers of low paid women. Thirdly, poverty is a problem which
relates to family circumstances, and thus the role of married women, and
more particularly single parent women, in relieving poverty through
their participation in the labour force is clearly of some significance.
These factors suggest in turn that there are a number of ways in which
we may define low pay relative to female employment. The first
definition would relate to some estimate of the subsistence level of
income. Thus, the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income
and Wealth took as its benchmark for low income weekly earnings at or
below the lowest decile of the earnings of full-time manual men. This
approximates to two-thirds of the average earnings of men in full-time
manual work and to that level of net earnings (after tax and cash
benefits) which would be sufficient to provide a married couple with two
children with an income at least equal to that obtainable under the
system of supplementary benefit. A second definition of low pay would
compare female earnings with male earnings. The fact that average male
earnings exceed those of females across the whole spectrum of