{"id":1794,"date":"2019-11-27T13:02:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T12:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/?p=1794"},"modified":"2019-11-27T14:20:25","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T13:20:25","slug":"five-things-we-learned-about-the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-uk-public-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/five-things-we-learned-about-the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-uk-public-sector\/","title":{"rendered":"Five things we learned about the Gender Pay Gap in the UK Public Sector"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In our latest post, Professor Melanie Jones and Dr Ezgi Kaya share some findings from their project for the Office of Manpower Economics (OME)<\/a> which examined the gender pay gap in the UK public sector.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

1. Inequality is similar across the public and private sectors.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Despite the gender pay gap remaining slightly narrower in the\npublic sector than the private sector in 2018, our preferred measure of gender\npay inequality, namely that part of the gender pay gap we cannot account for\nusing the information available on workers and their jobs in a nationally\nrepresentative survey, is actually similar across the public and private\nsector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a reversal of an established pattern, including our previous work based on data until 2015<\/a> and suggests the public sector no longer represents a \u2018beacon of good practice\u2019 in gender pay inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. There\u2019s a \u2018glass ceiling\u2019 for women.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Attention on the gender pay gap tends to focus on the average\nworker, but our analysis explores the entire pay distribution. So, we also\nconsider gender pay gaps among both low and high pay workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps surprisingly, it\u2019s within the public sector that we find gender pay inequality is particularly pronounced among high pay workers consistent with the presence of a \u2018glass ceiling\u2019 where women are less likely to access the highest paying roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Doctors, teachers, police and prison officers, and workers in the NHS are all affected.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Separating the public sector into two parts according to\noccupations where pay is and is not informed by the recommendations of Pay\nReview Bodies (PRBs), we find similar levels of gender pay inequality on average.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there\u2019s a much more pronounced \u2018glass ceiling\u2019 in PRB occupations, which include doctors, teachers, police and prison officers, and workers in the NHS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. There\u2019s substantial variation between public sector occupations.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Substantial variation is evident across the five separate PRBs considered (see Figure 1). We find the gender pay gap among doctors and dentists (20%) is, for example, about four times that of workers in the NHS (5%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Notes: Figures are based on analysis of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (2018) and relate to occupations defined by the PRBs. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

5. Women are less likely to receive performance-related pay.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Despite the limited prevalence of performance-related pay in the\nUK public sector, which would include profit sharing, bonuses, piecework and\ncommission payments, we find women are less likely to receive\nperformance-related pay than men, and that this gap is larger than in the\nprivate sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More positively, conditional on receiving performance-related pay, and unlike in the private sector, we find no evidence of gender pay inequality in the amount of performance-related pay workers receive in the public sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Implications for policy and practice<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Our analysis will inform the Pay Review Bodies which make pay recommendations across the public sector and workforces critical in providing key public services in the UK. Working with the OME<\/a> means our analysis has the potential to impact on the pay of 2.5 million workers or around 45% of public sector staff, and that\u2019s a really exciting prospect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Future Research<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re keen to build on this project and further explore the\ndeterminants of the UK gender pay gap. And, we\u2019re currently examining whether\nthe introduction of Gender Pay\nGap Reporting<\/a> in the UK has had a narrowing impact on the gender pay gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve recently welcomed Suzanna Nesom to our research team as an ESRC\ncollaborative PhD<\/a> student working with Chwarae Teg<\/a>. They provide advice on policy\naffecting gender equality and the contribution of women to the economy. Her PhD\naims to understand why the gender pay gap varies so much across local authorities\nin Wales. So, watch this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melanie\nJones<\/strong><\/a> is a Professor of Economics at Cardiff Business School.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Ezgi\nKaya<\/strong><\/a> is a Lecturer in Economics at Cardiff Business School.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full report \u2018Understanding the Gender Pay Gap within the UK Public Sector<\/a>\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In our latest post, Professor Melanie Jones and Dr Ezgi Kaya share some findings from their project for the Office of Manpower Economics (OME) which examined the gender pay gap […]","protected":false},"author":1752,"featured_media":1795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1170],"tags":[1181,28,100,1183,1176,1184,219,199,1172,549,45,1182,1164,1173,1175,1180,198,1178,95,1185,1179,1174,1171,16,1177,548,48,47,502,32],"class_list":["post-1794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender-pay-gap","tag-bonuses","tag-cardiff-business-school","tag-cardiff-university","tag-chwarae-teg","tag-doctors","tag-economic-and-social-research-council","tag-economics","tag-esrc","tag-gender","tag-inequality","tag-nhs","tag-office-of-manpower-economics","tag-pay","tag-pay-gap","tag-pay-review-bodies","tag-performance-related-pay","tag-phd","tag-police","tag-policy","tag-policymaker","tag-prison-officers","tag-private-sector","tag-pubic-sector","tag-research","tag-teachers","tag-uk-economy","tag-uk-government","tag-wales","tag-women","tag-workers"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paOfaS-sW","meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/620\/2019\/11\/Gender-pay-gap.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1794"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1801,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions\/1801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}