EXP N.° 04509-2011-PA/TC

Historically men’s role as the main family breadwinner and women’s role as second income earners has been linked to gender differences in reward structures (Barrett and McIntosh, 1980; Humphries, 1977). Explicit allowances or supplements related to employees’ family positions have declined or disappeared under the impact of equal pay and sex discrimination legislation. For example, in Ireland, a marriage allowance was paid in the public sector as late as 1977. The ending of this process

does not, however, mean that stereotypical views of men as breadwinners and women as earners of pin money no longer affect wage structures. The main evidence for the continued influence of these gender roles on pay comes from two different sources.

• The continued and indeed increased share of jobs that do not provide sufficient income for the support of an independent adult (McLaughlin, 1995). This is due to both the perpetuation of low hourly wages and the growth of flexible and part- time employment.

• The view still held by employers of low paid women workers that their low wage demands can be considered an explanation or justification for paying low wage levels (Grant et al., 2005).

A counterargument to the first point - the growth of low wage below subsistence jobs - is that these are not all taken by women, with young people another very important source of low wage employment. However, young people are also often assumed to be seeking an additional, rather than a main, income. Furthermore as more of the jobs available to the low skilled are found in sectors associated with women’s work and are often both low paid and part-time, the government has stepped in to offer in- work benefits to assist those with family responsibilities to take these jobs. Thus the state tops up the income of those taking such jobs who have breadwinner responsibilities. Indeed, this policy was introduced as a result of empirical work that showed, in the early 1990s, that unemployed breadwinners were not able to re-enter the labour market as most of the jobs available were for second income earners (Gregg and Wadsworth, 1995).

Three sources reveal that the traditional perception that men require more income than women may still influence wage outcomes. First, some academics and policy- makers argue that minimum wage policies are inefficient as they do not target low income families or breadwinners. In making this argument they implicitly ignore one of the key principles of equal pay legislation, that is the right for individuals, irrespective of family position, to receive a fair wage for their labour. For example, in 1946, Stigler objected to a minimum wage on the grounds that:

Unless the minimum wage varies with the amount of employment, number of earners, non-wage income, family size and many other factors, it will be an inept device for combating poverty even for those who succeed in retaining employment.

Far from this argument dying out, Burkhauser and Harrison (2000) suggest that the increasing lack of a relationship between low wages and household heads has rendered the minimum wage tool outdated. They regard the fact that most of those employed in these jobs are young people and women as pure coincidence, thereby rejecting any view that the low wages paid in part reflect the practice of employing second income earners. Yet as soon as it is suggested that there should be a policy of raising wages for those at the bottom of the labour market, the argument turns on whether this would be a ‘wasted’ increase as the individuals are not reliant solely on their wage income for subsistence. This brings back into the picture the presumed differences in relation to household income by gender and by age.

The second source of evidence of the continued prevalence of the view that women are happy with ‘pin money’ comes from research on employers’ attitudes towards the pay of part-timers (Grant et al., 2005). Quotes from interviewed managers included that:

You’ve got this group of people, waiting until their partners come in, and then they’re coming out for a little bit of pocket money or a little bit of independence themselves.

(Grant et al., 2005: 59).

… in this area, there are a lot of people who want to work for pin money. We have good terms and conditions so people, aspire to work here.

(Grant et al., 2005; 20).

This latter reference to good terms and conditions is presumably to be interpreted in relation to an aspiration for pin money.

The third set of evidence suggests that the main dividing line between women’s work and men’s work derives from the construction or labelling of jobs as full wage jobs on the one hand, or as component wage jobs on the other. For example, the tasks associated with working in a bar or restaurant may be rewarded more highly in societies where this is a typical male and full-time profession than when the typical jobs are part-time and undertaken by women. In a 1980s study of post office occupations, ‘the gendering of the labour performed was less significant than the “gendering” of employment conditions and rewards’ (Siltanen, 1994: 190). This view can perhaps explain results that show gender segregation at the workplace to be more significant than gender segregation of occupations in explaining pay differentials (see Chapter 4). This indicates that there are differences in the gender division of labour and that these differences lead to variations in rewards to an occupation, according to whether, at the specific workplace, the job is primarily done by men or by women. Such flexibility would be less likely if the main barriers were

strong gender taboos over the type of work performed. This approach, where the low pay attaches to women in relation to their family position and not in relation to the tasks undertaken, can also help explain the emergence of new forms of undervaluation as women enter previously high paid occupations, an issue discussed in Chapter 6.