The Covid pandemic has set back the progress of women in the workplace by “at least two years”, a report has found.
PwC’s Women in Work Index warns that the ‘motherhood penalty’ has been exacerbated by the outworkings of the pandemic due to a range of factors including women having to take on more childcare duties as facilities such as nurseries were closed during lockdowns.
They survey found some positives, however, an improvement in the gender pay gap. This narrowing may have been skewed by the fall in male wages during the pandemic, it is suggested.
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The accountancy firm says that OECD data proves last year’s hypothesis that women took on more unpaid childcare responsibilities than men during the pandemic, causing them to leave the workforce at higher rates than men.
Mothers, it was found, were three times more likely than fathers to report taking on either the majority, or all, of the additional unpaid care work created by school or childcare facility closures.
PwC says that while fewer women are unemployed in Northern Ireland (3%) compared to the UK average (4%), far fewer are choosing to enter the workforce (69% in NI, with the UK average of 74%). According to the 2019 Labour Force Survey, the main reason that women are economically inactive is that they are looking after the family and the home.
There is a marked fall in the NI gender pay gap, they say, down four percentage points from 10% in 2019, and better than the UK average of 14%. One contributing factor is a small increase in the number of women working full-time - up from 62% in 2019 to 64% in 2020. In addition, they add, with more women in the region working in public services where full-time jobs are higher paid, this has also contributed to the reduction in the gender pay gap.
The Index adds that there has been a significant fall in the volume of part-time jobs, dropping by 3.2%, and coming down to its lowest level since September 2007.
The report adds: “This impacts women far more than men, as 79% of part-time employees in Northern Ireland are female. As part-time jobs are typically lower-paid, and combined with the lower volume of part-time jobs, these two factors effectively narrow the gender pay gap as a lower proportion of women’s pay would derive from low-paid part-time work.”
PwC’s analysis also raises concerns that new green jobs, aimed at reducing carbon emissions, will be concentrated in the utilities, construction and manufacturing sectors - sectors that are traditionally male-dominated. For example across the UK in 2019, just one in eight construction workers were female.
If nothing is done to improve women’s representation in these sectors, PwC estimates that the employment gap between men and women - which measures the additional number of men in employment, expressed as a percentage of the number of employed women - will widen by 1.7 percentage points by 2030 (rising from 20.8% in 2020 to 22.5% in 2030).
Lynne Rainey, PwC NI Partner, said: “It’s frustrating to see how precious progress over many years has been reversed by the pandemic. While Northern Ireland’s score has improved, the Index underlines the importance of the work we’ve been doing in recent years with a committed stakeholder group to identify and tackle the blockages that prevent women choosing to work.
“As we look forward as well to a net zero future, there’s a huge challenge in making sure women aren’t further left behind. We need to see targeted investment in upskilling and reskilling opportunities for women, because it’s critical that the green new future is inclusive.
“The future of work has a major role to play as well - proactive policies around more flexible working opportunities such as shared parental leave and affordable childcare need to become the norm. By doing this businesses and organisations can help reduce the substantial inequalities around unpaid care and domestic work that remain for women.”
Overall, the UK’s position on the Index rose from 16th to 9th in 2020, strongly outperforming other OECD countries, and placing it almost 10% above the OECD average in 2020. This is the largest annual improvement the UK has achieved in the 10 year history of the Index.
However, Larice Stielow, Senior Economist at PwC, says this result needs to be treated with caution: “We must be careful in interpreting this result as a real benefit to women’s employment outcomes. A key driver was a temporary fall in men’s median weekly earnings, likely due to the short term effects of the pandemic on wages and the furlough, skewing down earnings.
“Men’s earnings have since rebounded, and the gender pay gap in the UK has widened again by 2 percentage points, back up to 14%. However, what is encouraging is that women’s median earnings continued to rise during the pandemic and suggests gender equality in the UK continues on an upward trajectory.”
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