In this weeks, blog Dr Lisa Wilson takes an in-depth focus on the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly in relation to the gender pay gap and asks whether we can really set targets for closure of the gap if we don’t have the data?'
In the Republic of Ireland on the 24th April the results of the deliberations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality were announced which included 45 priority recommendations covering a wide range of areas set out in its Oireachtas mandate. These include recommendations on the Constitution, Politics and Leadership, caregiving and childcare, Domestic, Sexual and Gender Based violence, Pay and the Workplace and Social Protection.
One of the key areas of recommendations from the Citizens Assembly and the focus of this blog relates to the thematic area of ‘pay and workplace conditions’. On this area the Citizens Assembly specifically recommended that:
- The State should set targets in legislation to reduce the hourly gender pay gap (currently 14%) to 9% by 2025 and to 4% by 2030 with a view to eliminating it by 2035.
- The Gender Pay Gap Information Bill should be enacted and implemented without delay. The law should include penalties for non-compliance and an obligation for annual reporting.
- Increase the minimum wage to align it with the living wage by 2025 while considering potential employment impacts on small businesses.
- Support employment contract security through:
(a) Establishing a legal right to collective bargaining to improve wages, working conditions and rights in all sectors.
(b) Increased resourcing of the Workplace Relations Commission for more effective enforcement of current employment laws.
These recommendations have the potential to really transform the working lives of females and indeed that of males in our labour force, via the third and fourth recommendation above.
The recommendation around the closing of the hourly gender pay gap to 9% by 2025 and its ultimate elimination by 2035 is to be welcomed, although I’ve got a number of points I would make around this recommendation.
My concerns relate to our data availability on the gender pay gap in the Republic of Ireland and the dire need going forward for a timely and consistent data source if we are to reliably track progress toward narrowing or closing the gender pay gap. This might seem like a really nerdy point, but if you read through I will explain why I feel that this is so important.
The Citizens Assembly report that the gender pay gap is currently 14%. This data is based on that supplied to Eurostat on the gender pay gap for Ireland. It is an estimate of the gender pay gap in mean hourly pay in 2017. Yes, that is right, 2017!
Now, whilst this 2017 figure was updated on the Eurostat website back in December 2020 with data on the gender pay gap for 2018, it is still really shocking that we have no timelier national data on our gender pay gap in average hourly pay than that for 2 or 3 or 4 years ago.
This is particularly dire in light of the fact that we are pushing forward with the Gender Pay gap information bill which will put onus on employers to publish their gender pay gap in average hourly earnings on an annual basis, for the year previous, and not for what it was 2, 3 or 4 years ago.
Added to this is the fact that we do not have any consistency in terms of how or where we report our national gender pay gap data. This is because we do not have official statistics on the gender pay gap at national level, and so there is no consistency either in how we measure it, the frequency with which we measure it, or the source of data which we use to measure it.
I recently was supporting some work being carried out on the gender pay gap in Ireland, and I provided the most up-to-date data - which as I mentioned above, was published in December 2020 and covers the reference year 2018 and was sourced from the same place as the 2017 data, the Eurostat website. It estimates the gender pay gap in hourly earnings as 11% in 2018. I was asked ‘why then has the gov.ie website recently published the 2017 figure of 14% and cited it as the most up-to-date data?’. My response was that because even the Government do not have any idea that the next year of data is on the Eurostat website, and because we do not have any consistent place on our national statistics website that we can source data on the gender pay gap.
This brings to me to the next point which relates to the requirement for a consistent data source to capture the gender pay gap. I have to say, when I saw the gender pay gap in average (mean) hourly earnings for 2018 for Ireland on the Eurostat website as 11.3%, I was somewhat taken aback. This is considerably lower than the frequently cited 14.4% for the year previous (2017). I was suspicious from the get go, as obviously this would be a considerable drop over a one-year period. There were no significant policy changes which came to mind which had been implemented over that same period which would have driven this really substantial drop in the gender pay gap.
A closer look at the data sources for the 2017 and the 2018 figures revealed to me a more likely story. The substantial change in the estimate of the gender pay gap in average hourly earnings for 2017 compared to 2018 is more likely a consequence of the fact that the data sources are totally different, than a real decline in the gender pay gap. Or at least, we do not have any idea how much of the decline is real or how much of the decline is related to differences in data source. The 2017 data is based on administrative tax data and Census 2011 which was then weighted to represent the population (employment population), whereby hours were imputed for all employees in the earnings dataset. The 2018 data is based on data from the Structure of Earnings Survey 2018, an employee survey which collected data on a range of variables, including gender, earnings and hours worked. Where the data for 2019 and 2020 and 2021 will come from is anyone's guess.
Beyond these issues related to timeliness, consistency and reliability of data is another issue which relates to the recommendation made by the Citizens Assembly to reach particular targets over particular time periods in terms of the size of the gender pay gap. Targets can be said to focus minds and give an explicit goal under which political and policy action can work towards to eradicate the gender pay gap. However, there is there is a real risk that when it comes to the gender pay gap that if we narrow our focus to saying that if we reach the target of a 9% gap in average (mean) hourly earnings by 2025 and a complete closure of this gap by 2035 that we have solved the problem of the gender pay gap.
Now, whilst it would be no mean feat to eradicate the gender pay gap in mean hourly pay by 2035, it would not translate that we have eradicated the gender pay gap per se. In this regard, the worry is that because what we measure is ultimately what comes to matter by having a single indicator as our only policy target we risk fooling ourselves into thinking that as this number narrows issues related to gender gaps in pay are going away. This will not necessarily be the case. This is because the gender pay gap is a complex issue and cannot be accurately captured via a single indicator such as the gap in mean hourly earnings. The Gender Pay Gap Information Bill recognises this, and so this is why employers will be required to report on the gap using a range of indicators.
Beyond this, we need only look across the border to Northern Ireland to understand the failings of relying on a single headline indicator to capture the gender pay gap. In their case, they utilise the gender pay gap in the median earnings of full-time workers only. Using this measure the data has shown consistently over the last number of years that females earn more than males, and so in this sense there is a reverse gender pay gap. As a result, there has been a lack of political will to do anything about the gender pay gap, and indeed an air of contempt from politicians to those trying to get political will behind the need to do something about the gender pay gap that they would be better off stop talking about it because females are said to be the net benefactors of gender gaps in pay. The reality however is that whilst that may be true using that single indicator, when we look at the extent of the gender pay gap using a range of indicators we see overwhelmingly that females earn less than males. They earn less when we use mean earnings rather than median earnings. They earn less when we look across all males and females, as opposed to just those in full-time employment. They earn less on a weekly basis. They earn less over the month. They earn less over the year. They earn less over the lifetime.