Unsure how to start?: the continuing childcare challenge

Childcare has barely been away from the headlines in the last few months, and two new reports have attracted attention. Together they go some way in suggesting what could be done to improve this ailing sector.  As I have previously blogged, there are overlapping crises in availability and affordability of childcare for parents; workforce development and pay issues for employees in early years education; years of shortfall in terms of the money provided by government, compared to the actual costs of providing a place for a child. As the enhanced ‘free’ childcare hours offer rolls out across the country, lessons from elsewhere are timely.

The first report which caught my eye is a kind of ‘back to the future’ exercise which evaluates the success of the Sure Start programme.  This initiative was set up under the Labour government in 1999, and saw the roll-out of ‘one-stop shops’ for families of under-fives across England. Centres provided not only childcare and early education, but also access to support for parents on health and employment issues.  Initially targeted in areas of high deprivation, the programme was later expanded to provide Children’s Centres throughout England, before the incoming coalition government slashed funding, and saw many Centres closed.

Researchers from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that children who grew up within easy reach of Sure Start facilities had better educational outcomes at GCSEs, than those who did not.  These results applied particularly to the early, targeted version of Sure Start, and the uplift in exam results was particularly strong for the least advantaged children, who were eligible for Free School Meals. Budgets were highest in the first iteration of Sure Start and remained higher in those settings, than in the newer Children’s Centres.  Paul Johnson, the Director of IFS, remarks how the scheme was ‘expanded then diluted’, leading to a loss in effectiveness. He argues that the focus on the most disadvantaged children is well-evidenced, and suggests that it could have been usefully maintained.

By contrast, today’s enhanced childcare strategy proposes more free childcare hours across the range of providers: 30 hours per week are currently available during term time to 3 and 4 year olds with working parents; 15 hours have just come onstream for 2 year olds, with children from 9 months eligible for 15 hours from September.  By 2025, there will be 30 government-funded hours for every child from 9 months to 5 years old. These hours, however, are not a universal entitlement: they are available to parents working at least 16 hours per week.  As such, they do not include the least advantaged households where at least one parent is employed for fewer hours.  Paul Johnson describes this as a shift from focussing on outcomes for children in poverty, to subsidising working parents.  Meanwhile, the news is full of parents and childcare providers talking about the difficulties in actually accessing the government-supported hours: cash-strapped nurseries find that they cannot meet demand without increasing charges elsewhere; they may not have the staff or space to expand to create new places; parents find that they cannot locate local providers, as many nurseries have closed down recently, and the remainder having long waiting lists.  The policy came without a clear implementation plan, and so the sector muddles on leaving many parents struggling to find an affordable place.

The second recent report, from the Fawcett Society, looks at what can be learnt from other countries to improve childcare and early education here.  From experience in France and Ireland, they recommend that an expert group is established to look at how to move from the current situation to a model of childcare and early education which brings all stakeholders aboard, and secures consensus on government strategy.  They advocate ultimately for a universal, free offer, but recognise that this could only come about over time.  The emphasis meantime is on securing affordability for parents, and putting funding in place to expand the early years workforce.  France, Estonia and Ireland have all funded nurseries directly to ensure that quality provision is accessible for all, mitigating the tendency for ‘childcare deserts’ to emerge.  The Fawcett report also stresses that early years services should be integrated with strategies in other relevant policy areas – notably shared parental leave.  The UK currently provides less parental leave time, at lower rates of pay than many other European countries.  I have written previously about the lack of independent entitlement for men, and how the low rates of pay in a complex system lead to shared parental leave being a distinctly minority option in England.  Governments wishing to enhance parents’ earning and caring options could usefully resource better parental leave options, to dovetail with childcare services as children reach nine months.

Given the difficult conditions in which the childcare sector is currently operating, a coherent strategy for future evolution is essential. Labour have promised a review, but with little detail on aims or parameters. We know that the most disadvantaged children have much to gain from early learning, and that the current UK system is not working well for parents or providers.  Children themselves lose out without quality support when they are young.  The only thing less affordable than the large investment likely needed to transform the early years sector into an integrated high-quality offer available to all, is the cost of not doing so: poorer child outcomes, fewer working mothers and an overstressed and undervalued workforce are not in any manifesto.   

Big in Japan?: a revealing tale of parental leave policy

  

Approaching Father’s Day this Sunday, papers have begun to fill with articles about the state of fatherhood, and continuing efforts to come up with a set of policies which might hit the sweet spot of promoting involved fatherhood, and reducing gender gaps in the labour market. Our country’s current system has been pronounced inadequate by the TUC and other campaigners.

Regular readers will know that I have long praised the models of generous parental leave in Nordic countries, where fathers benefit from their own entitlement to leave, at relatively high rates of pay. I’m used to hearing about the ‘latte papas’ of Stockholm’s streets. They are to be found strolling around with their buggies and coffees while on parental leave. But my image of Japan, has been of a country with a long-hours working culture, and little history of widespread involved fatherhood. Yet, these days, if you look at whereabouts provides the most leave dedicated to fathers among OECD countries, the answer is not to be found in Sweden or Nordic countries, but Japan.  There’s even a Japanese portmanteau term for progressive fathers: “ikumen”, which brings together ‘ikuji’ – childcare – and ‘ikemen’ – cool-looking guy.

Although mothers and fathers in Sweden and Japan have similar total amounts of parental leave available to them as couple, the portion of that leave earmarked for fathers is now much higher in Japan.  Swedish parents have access to shareable leave which is mostly taken by mothers in practice. Has Japan transformed from a comparative underdog, to top of the table on egalitarian parenthood in recent years?

As ever with questions like this, the answer is ‘it’s a bit more complicated than that’.  It’s undoubtedly true that Japanese government has seriously upped its game in terms of parental leave policy. Like many of the wealthiest countries, Japan has been experiencing a long-term decline in the birth rate, and an ageing population. Japan’s fertility rate, which stands at 1.3 children per woman, is low compared the 2.1 children per woman required to maintain population levels. Historically, childcare has been the preserve of women, but in recent years Japanese women have entered the workforce in growing numbers – over 70%  are now employed.  Nonetheless, mothers often move into part-time roles and still lag men on promotion and pay. In response, the Japanese government has introduced new legislation.

In 2021, the Childcare and Nursing Care Leave Act introduced the entitlement to one year’s parental leave for fathers and mothers. However, mirroring experience around the world – also in Nordic countries, as I’ve documented here – the take-up rates for fathers have been low at the start. Only 6% of Japanese men employed in the private sector used their entitlement, compared to over 80% of women. And corporate culture in Japan is widely seen as providing the explanation – Japanese fathers remain ‘afraid’ that taking leave will hurt their career prospects. Moreover, not all workers are eligible for parental leave – those in smaller companies and on short-term contracts do not typically have these benefits.

As in other countries, there has been tweaking of legislation to encourage greater take-up. According to Diplomat magazine, in 2022, the 2021 Act was amended to make it more flexible and attractive for fathers. The amendments mean that the 12 months can be split into blocks of leave, rather than being taken all at once, and workers are allowed to complete a set amount of occupational tasks during their leave period. Employees can now give shorter notice before going on leave, and employers are encouraged to publicise uptake rates. However, these amendments do not apply to small- and medium-sized companies, nor to part-time workers or unmarried parents.

Meanwhile, there are also issues around recent entitlement to paternity leave – this gives Japanese men 4 weeks leave at 80% of pay in the post-birth period. Currently, only 14% of Japanese fathers take it – a scenario which the government is intent on transforming to 50% of fathers by 2025. Academics consulted on this ambition, said that the legislation alone was unlikely to shift strong cultural patterns of commitment to employment for men, and primary parenthood for women – but it is at a welcome step in the right direction.

I once compared the UK’s slow progress on shared parental leave policy and culture change, to turning round an oil tanker. Japan might look to its fishing industry. One Japanese fishing town has recently changed its fortunes by building an Instagram-able squid statue to attract tourists and boost the local fleet. Perhaps public art with representations of involved fatherhood might help make leave-taking bigger in Japan? Maybe Japanese fathers need more role models like the previous environment minister, who became the first senior politician to take paternity leave. Or, possibly, more female politicians would be beneficial – women make up only 10% of members of parliament in Japan at the moment. On the long road to gender equality there’s still some way to go. Japan (unlike the UK) has moved rapidly to make substantial parental leave available to fathers in their own right – but take-up is still a developing story.

A report out today which is recommending an increase in the amount of paternity leave available in the UK (which currently stands at only 2 weeks), and a more generous rate of pay to cover it, includes survey data on reasons why new fathers had returned to work without completing their fortnight’s leave. A total of nearly one third of these men said that they had either experienced pressure to return from their employers, or that they feared missing out on future opportunities if they did not go back promptly. Even though attitudes in the UK are less traditional than in Japan, and we have a lower gender pay gap and greater representation of women in public life, workplaces are not all equally inclined to support more gender-equal patterns of parental leave. Who knows what might happen if our legislation for fathers’ leave took some inspiration from Japan?

Shared Parental Leave in limbo

It’s been a strange time recently for shared parental leave in the UK.  It’s rarely been more talked about, but current policy still lacks the required action on reforms that would make it easier for more people to contemplate using it.  The long reach of the pandemic into discussions around the future of work and work-life balance – and growing evidence that Covid-19 has entrenched many aspects of gender inequality – have ensured that shared parental leave has become a hot topic in the media and policy circles. If fathers were more effectively encouraged and enabled to take substantial leave early in their children’s lives, it would be an important step in the direction of greater gender equality in the workplace.  With both parents taking significant time out, there would be less scope for maternity discrimination, and also potential to close the gender gaps in pay and progression, often so typical for parents in the UK.

However, the backstory is quite complicated. Back in 2019, the government launched a consultation on shared parental leave, and soon afterwards called an election.  The Conservative manifesto made some commitments on childcare, and included a vague aim to make it ‘easier for men to take paternity leave’; but the manifesto avoided any of the questions around shared parental leave which were asked in its consultation. It has raised more than a few eyebrows that we still await publication of the outcomes of that consultation.  Neither have we seen the results of an evaluation of the existing model of Shared Parental Leave (SPL), which was begun as long ago as 2018.  Meanwhile, campaigners, policy analysts and academics working on the issue, are broadly agreed that the current system needs to change. Any progress on gender equality will be diminished without a decent shared parental leave policy.

So, what’s wrong with what we’ve got?  At the moment, take-up rates of Shared Parental Leave are low because the policy does not grant independent leave entitlement to fathers or second parents, nor does it offer attractive rates of pay.  Rather, employed mothers are enabled to sign over some of their maternity leave entitlement to their partners, and it is paid at the level which is below the National Minimum Wage.  It doesn’t take a policy Einstein to work out why perhaps as few as 2% of fathers may be using it each year. Reforms of SPL should therefore address the need for individual entitlement, and also the rate at which it is paid. 

How can expenditure in this area be justified?  If we look at the much more popular and effective systems in other countries, we find that ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ months of leave for fathers, paid at a respectable fraction of earnings, have led to mass take-up – particularly in Scandinavia.  Nordic countries also enjoy high rates of maternal employment (which partly covers costs of the schemes).  In addition, some evidence suggests that shared parental leave is linked to lower levels of conflict in parenting partnerships, and higher father involvement where parents do separate. 

Given all that, what are we waiting for?  Well, apart from the consultation response and the evaluation results, perhaps the answer is political commitment.  A further reason why shared parental leave has been in the news this year, is that the government brought forward the MOMA Bill, which enabled Suella Braverman, Attorney General, to become the first Cabinet-level politician to take maternity leave. However, as I blogged at the time, the legislation failed to improve the situation for the majority of MPs, who were still left without full maternity cover.  Since 2019 there has been a proxy voting system for new parents on leave, but MPs’ other duties in constituencies were not routinely covered in full.  Following the debate on the MOMA Bill, the government promised to address these issues later. 

There was little fanfare when IPSA, the independent body which regulates MPs’ pay and conditions, announced at Easter that it had established a parental leave fund to provide additional office cover for MPs.  Recent campaigning by Stella Creasy, currently pregnant with her second child, has highlighted that the cover provided may fall short of that required to employ a ‘locum MP’ replacement for new mothers.  IPSA have argued that the term ‘locum MP’ is not recognised ‘as no unelected person can undertake all of the duties of an MP. It is up to Parliament to decide if the law should be changed’.  IPSA have outlined their provisions for parental leave here. In an open letter, signatories from trade unions, charities and academia have asked IPSA to rethink their approach.  

A Professor of Politics at the University of Bristol has described this as a ‘missed opportunity to modernise the world of politics’.  The professor goes on to suggest that institutions should be working on positive diversity and inclusion policies, rather than responding to individual requests.  The lack of full maternity cover for junior MPs is a potential barrier to women seeking roles in public life.  Parliament should be modelling good practice in this area as it legislates on workplace equalities for us all. The discussion over MPs’ right to maternity cover does not even begin to address the disparity between entitlements for mothers, and fathers or second parents, in the House.  The parental leave fund provides money for office cover for up to seven months for mothers, and for two weeks for fathers or second parents, in line with the current 2-week duration of paternity leave.

While I was thinking about the prospects for reform of SPL occurring anytime soon, the Labour party announced proposals to make shared parental leave, among other forms of leave, a day-one right for workers.  There was no immediate indication, however, of plans to alter the current system of SPL.  Meanwhile, @Wonkypolicywonk – a fellow veteran in this policy area – had helpfully posted a link to a question put in parliament on recent progress on shared parental leave, and he has since blogged on the marathon policy process here. In response to the parliamentary question on progress, the government minister referred to the evaluation surveys and the consultation on shared parental leave.  He said that this information was still being processed, and that findings will be published ‘later this year’. This response suggests that there are several circles of something to be travelled through before an improved version of shared parental leave is available.  For the moment, limbo is where it’s at. 

Unequal terms: maternity leave in parliament

Question: How long does it take to legislate for a scheme for maternity cover for members of parliament?  Answer: If you want to make things better for ministers, one day; for common-or-garden MPs, still waiting ….

If you’re not already aware, today, on February 11^th, the government is fast-tracking legislation which will allow Suella Braverman, soon to give birth to her second child, to go on maternity leave and return in six months’ time.  She will be entitled to have her job covered while on leave, and will remain on full pay, on equal terms with senior civil servants. You may think it extraordinary, but without the Ministerial & Other Maternity Allowances Bill, there is currently no mechanism for government ministers to take maternity leave without resigning from government. The Bill enables an alternative, by designating the pregnant office holder ‘Minister on Leave’, and permitting an additional person to be appointed to cover the role, without breaking statutory limits on the total number of Ministers. (In an interesting aside, a House of Commons briefing notes that the Minister on Leave is not specifically guaranteed to return to their particular post, as Ministerial appointments remain at the Prime Minister’s discretion).

On the face of it, the legislation is progressive in enabling full maternity cover for senior MPs – and about time too. But as my opening question lays bare, this legislation is far from providing a level playing field for all MPs: the package on offer is only open to government ministers, the leaders of the opposition (House of Commons and Lords) and opposition whips.  As for the rest of members of parliament, they remain in the antediluvial position of having no automatic right to maternity cover, although they do now have access to a proxy vote for six months.  This means that another MP can vote in parliament on their behalf. If they wish to hire someone to cover constituency duties, they have to apply for funding which is not guaranteed.

And what about men becoming parents in parliament? The Bill does not address them at all.  Several opposition MPs are vocal in their criticism, not just of the opening up of a two-tier system of maternity leave for women, but of nothing new on offer for men.  At the moment, MPs are entitled to 2 weeks’ paternity leave, again with a proxy vote, but without additional cover. 

But what, I hear you ask, about shared parental leave?  As I noted back in November 2019, the Conservatives went into the last election with a consultation on the future of the policy still live, and no manifesto commitments on reforming it.  There’s growing agreement in the policy community that the system should be revamped, with dedicated fathers’ leave and higher rates of pay. Since 2019, there’s been tumbleweed on the issue, with the timetable for the government’s response to the consultation consigned to the box labelled ‘in due course’. In contrast to the scramble to provide legislation helpful to Suella Braverman, the progress on shared parental leave for all has been glacial (my blog archive covers years of stasis on the topic …). 

In legislating so narrowly today, the government appears to have sought a quick fix for people at the top of the political profession, rather than a more lasting improvement in working parenthood for all MPs. Apparently, the Opposition has been assured that more comprehensive measures will be forthcoming later in year – the government should be held to that.

As for working parents in the UK, the promise of well-paid maternity, paternity and parental leave remains far off for many.  I’ve written before about the possibilities opened up by tech CEOs taking paternity leave: in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, he took half the length of leave offered to employees.  This created the impression that the full leave entitlement was incompatible with men holding top jobs.  In the Bill passing today, the effect for women in parliament is rather the reverse, with full maternity cover granted only to the highest ranks. This unequal treatment is a poor example for parliament to set, and will underline the impression of many people that the government does not prioritise the needs of ordinary working parents.  While the Ministerial & Other Maternity Allowances Bill rightly improves the situation for a senior women in parliament, the inequalities it exposes in practice, leave me with the same sound in my ears as Mark Zuckerberg’s paternity leave announcement – it’s the sound of one hand clapping …

Family Fortunes: What’s on offer in GE2019?

With the publication of the Conservative manifesto, we now have documents from all the main parties outlining their proposals for government, following the General Election next month.  True to the wonk in Wonklifebalance, I have looked at them all to see what they are offering in the way of childcare and parental leave policies.  The fact that each of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have proposed measures in these areas, indicates that parents of young children, and working mothers in particular, are a part of the electorate they wish to address directly.  Against a background of stagnating wages, and with women less likely to report that they have decided who they will vote for, this comes as little surprise… As Sarah Ronan pointed out in the Independent recently, working mothers are at least as important a group to cultivate for success in this election, as ‘Workington man’ – and they are fed up of having their priorities overlooked.

 

What promises await voters seeking relief from the diet of stretched wages, expensive childcare and work-life out-of-balance?  Well, while childcare provision gets a makeover across the political spectrum, there’s actually pretty slim pickings regarding reform of our ailing parental leave system.  Perhaps the Conservatives are simply waiting for the results of their consultation on this issue, which is rather mistimed electorally, as the deadline for submissions falls on Friday.  Consultations on neo-natal leave and flexible working closed in October, and the manifesto says that the Tories will now offer neo-natal leave.  They will also ‘encourage’ flexible working and aim to make it ‘easier for men to take paternity leave’ – er, that’s pretty much it. Apart from beefing up legislation to outlaw maternity discrimination, there is no positive offer on parental leave, shared or otherwise.

 

Both Labour and the Lib Dems do a bit about parental leave, but choose not to address the big issue of reforming shared parental leave. Labour has extended the option of shared parental leave to self-employed people as part of their Charter for the Arts.  But there are no dedicated quotas of parental leave for fathers, even though these are widely viewed as a major component in closing the gender gap for working parents.  Bizarrely, the Labour party has opted to extend paid maternity leave to 12 months; while this leave can be transferred to men if mothers wish to do so, this move risks making our unequal system even more unequal, by giving more months to mothers at relatively low rates of wage replacement.  Doubling paternity leave to 4 weeks, while welcome, does little to revolutionise traditional patterns of leave-taking.  Similarly, the Liberal Democrats propose tripling paternity leave to 6 weeks, but without proposals related to wider parental leave.

 

Meanwhile, in childcare it’s bonanza time – if by bonanza you mean coming up with ideas to show that the inadequacies of the current system have registered, while being a bit more vague on implementation.  As regular readers know, 30 hours free childcare really is quite complicated to provide.  All three parties recognise that this as a major concern, and they are competing to improve on the current patchy and under-funded system. That they have all put money on the table, is some recognition of the precariousness of today’s services.

 

Most ambitious is Labour, looking to reverse the cuts to Sure Start Children’s Centres throughout the country, and to create a new Sure Start Plus network, with provision for under-2s.  This offer would aspire to provide 30 hours free childcare for all 2-4 year olds within five years, as well as new care for children between 1 and 2 years old.  Labour would invest in a graduate workforce and recruit 150,000 Early Years staff.  They would also subsidise additional hours of childcare, above the 30 hours per week, on a sliding scale according to income. The price tag of around £4.5 billion indicates the step change these proposals would represent, with costs in part recouped via increased participation of women in workforce.

 

The Conservatives concentrate more on the enabling role of wraparound childcare in England, to facilitate employment.  Focussing on after-school and holiday provision, they propose a £1 billion investment, comprising £250 million per year for three years, to boost school provision of out-of-hours services.  This could mean supporting voluntary sector providers too.  A further £250 million will cover capital costs where schools need new staff or equipment to establish wraparound services.  There is no mention of additional support for under-2s.  The aim is for 250,000 additional children to have on-site summer childcare in primary school.  As such, this is clearly a more modest proposal than Labour’s.

 

Over with the Liberal Democrats, Children’s Centres receive £1 billion funding. Responding to the need to plug the childcare gap between the end of maternity leave and eligibility for free hours at age 2, they will also give working parents of children aged 9 months to 2 years an entitlement of 35 hours free childcare for 48 weeks of the year.  Like Labour, they want to increase the proportion of Early Years staff with qualifications, and they will triple the Early Years Pupil Premium to help the most disadvantaged children.  They will also roll out the Baby box programme (which has been established in Scotland) more widely.  This scheme gives new parents a box containing basic clothing, a thermometer and books for their newborn.

 

Parents undoubtedly find themselves in the spotlight this election, with all parties recognising that they need to offer something more.  There is enthusiasm for Early Years services as helping to narrow the gaps in opportunities between the most and least advantaged children. However, ensuring that major investment is rolled out effectively, and that staff are in place to fulfil our leaders’ ambitions, will be far from child’s play ….

 

 

What next for parental leave and flexible working?

It’s National #WorkLifeWeek , and appropriately enough, responses are due on elements of the government’s consultation on its Good Work plan to support families.  This is seeking views on parental leave and flexible working policies. Views on Neonatal Leave, where parents need to attend hospital if their newborn is ill, and on transparency in employers’ publication of flexible working and parental leave entitlements, need to be submitted by 11^th October.  Meanwhile, questions relating to government policy on parental leave, require responses by late November.

 

In bold contrast to other areas of current policy, the government is keen to emphasise trade-offs in choosing between different options in these schemes. There are a lot of questions about the relative merits of different lengths of parental leave, and of levels of pay entitlements and capping.  It’s like that bit in an eye test where they ask about whether you see better with lens A or B, but without the part where you get the sum of all the options for your best vision.

 

Like the Gender Equality Roadmap before it (cited in the Good Work plan, and which I blogged about earlier ) there’s a lot of observations about things we already know, without much sense of an overarching commitment to resources in the area.  This is an issue when the choices being asked about, often seem to boil down to ‘do you want people – especially fathers – to be able to access additional periods of leave, or would you like them be better paid?’.  As the status quo is widely viewed as inadequate in terms of length and pay, it all feels like a bit of a damp squib.  To its credit, the plan does look at international evidence, and it addresses the importance of wider culture change in enhancing mothers’ ability to return to work, and fathers’ ability to spend more time with their children.  But it doesn’t seem to provide much direction with what it sees – it’s all a matter of trade-offs, you see.  This might seem fair enough in a consultation, but options to extend leave and pay entitlements together, tend to be couched in terms of risks to labour supply, winners and losers in different groups, and concentrating on the economic costs, rather than social benefits. There’s an implicit feel of ‘this is going to cost’, without much attention on how costs of extending fathers’ leave may be partially offset by more mothers in the workforce.  If you want something closer to Nordic policies – and many do, and they have the benefit of being relatively effective in getting mothers back to work and Dads on parental leave – then you need to commit at a national level to put resources in.  This means financial support, but also assistance with practical ways of encouraging behaviour change in the workplace.  Without  resources, we’ll be consulting ad infinitum on why take-up of shared parental leave is so low…

 

The plan also discusses options around publishing flexible working and family leave policies, and advertising flexible working at point of hire.  Mumsnet has been running a campaign to #Publishparentalleave so that employees can make informed choices about jobs. A proposition to make employers’ flexible and parental leave policies accessible via gender pay gap reporting, has been welcomed by a range of organisations.  The consultancy Timewise has sounded a note of caution regarding enforcement of advertising flexibility, as it may raise the prospect of ‘flexwashing’ – that is, employers stating flexible options are available, without meaningfully providing them. They argue that employers need additional resources to implement flexible working properly, and that government could fund guidance and support.  The options for reforming parental leave and pay raise similar issues: without an infrastructure of universal, high quality, affordable childcare, and resources to provide better levels of pay for periods of leave, and without tools to encourage senior managers to take leave themselves – and to manage and promote others who do so – we could end up stuck in the spin cycle…

 

 

 

Gender pay gap reporting: the sequel

Last year I wrote about the advent of gender pay gap reporting, with a little help from the Undertones.  Today gender pay gap reporting enters what might be called its difficult second album stage.  As it’s an annual event, we have to ask has anything changed since last year?

 

In short, not much.  The headline figures show that the overall gender pay gap has remained virtually static, moving from 9.7% to 9.6% this year; sector-by-sector analysis published in the Guardian shows that the gap has in fact widened in most industries. Like last year, almost four fifths of companies pay men more than women. Overall, 48% of companies reported a smaller gender pay gap this year, meaning that in 52% of cases, the gap remained the same or grew wider still – as for so many issues in the UK, the gender pay gap presents a divided picture.

 

Some of the industries with the highest proportion of female workers report some of the biggest gender pay gaps.  Although education and care are resolutely female-dominated, a private care home provider and two academies trusts reported amongst the biggest gender pay gaps of all, with women earning 33p or less for every £1 earned by men.  This is indicative of women on the frontline, in relatively low-paid sectors, who are managed by senior men.  These figures point to a lack of progression in many traditionally female roles, with men getting more opportunities for promotion, or being recruited from outside to take on executive posts.  

 

The pattern of job mobility at senior levels currently seems to favour men’s careers.  In my blog on last year’s figures, I wondered if the relatively high gender pay gaps in public sector organisations (often majority women, and yet often with men at the top) might be explained by women being retained in posts with flexible working, but where their chances of promotion were weaker.  Writing about the civil service, Jane Dudman shows that pay structures work against women looking to move into more senior roles.  There is a cap on internal pay rises which disproportionately affects women, as they are less likely to leave for private sector jobs. When men do this, it can be a route back into senior civil service posts, when they return on much higher salaries, increasing the pay gap between men and women.  This explains why in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, female directors who have risen from within the civil service, are paid less than male directors who have come from higher-paid roles outside. 

 

You might say why don’t women just do the same as men and move around to enhance their pay?  The answer, I think, gets to part of the heart of why gender pay gaps are hard to shift overnight.  While the civil service, local government and health service jobs may offer flexibility, often to acknowledge women’s caring work at home, they do not promote these flexible workers as often as might be expected.  The lure of the well-paid outsider is often hard to resist when recruiting at senior levels. And the women maintaining their careers through flexible working arrangements often find it difficult to move outside, as they may not get the same deal on flexibility elsewhere.  The answer may lie, therefore, at least in part, in enhancing parental leave and flexible working arrangements for men.  If all working parents routinely take some time to accommodate family life, then the gender pay gap may be encouraged towards equality. 

 

Today also marks the fourth anniversary of the UK’s shared parental leave policy.  As I have written in the past, the model we have here is far from ideal, in that it does not include a freestanding period of leave for fathers.  The Nordic countries are exemplars of the impact that more equal leave structures can have – in Sweden, men take up a quarter of all parental leave days and have a ‘daddy quota’ which is theirs alone, and lost to the family if they do not use it.  Sweden enjoys very high rates of maternal employment. However, Sweden still has a gender pay gap, explained by familiar patterns of men entering higher-paid sectors of the workforce, and working full-time in greater numbers.  Even at the vanguard of culture change, work towards equality remains to be done. 

 

Back in the UK, gender pay gap reporting has driven the debate around gender inequality at work up the agenda and ensured that the conversation about the factors underlying the figures is high-profile.  If we are to move beyond talk into transformative action, we need to strengthen the incentives towards concrete action to narrow the gender pay gap. Perhaps every five years companies should be held accountable for their action plans.  These narrative accompaniments to the gender pay gap figures are currently produced voluntarily, and it could be that giving them more teeth is a further steer in the right direction, as the Fawcett Society has suggested.  The gender pay gap tells us a lot about the value we give different types of work, and how we accommodate caring for children and family members alongside formal employment.  To level the playing field between men and women we need to take more than baby steps. 

 

Springing into action on Shared Parental Leave?

Today marks the vernal equinox in the Northern hemisphere, the official start of Spring, and the day when we experience almost exactly equal amounts of daylight and night time.  What better time to consider the balance between the sexes in terms of earning and caring work, and gender equality in general?

Appropriately, the House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee have published their Fathers and the Workplace report, making recommendations concerning paternity leave, flexible working, workplace culture and the much-discussed – and often criticised –  Shared Parental Leave, which was first made available to parents almost exactly three years ago, in 2015.

Shared Parental Leave was introduced in order to better meet the aspirations of new generations of mothers and fathers, who wish to share employment and childcare responsibilities more equally, avoiding the traditional default of breadwinner fathers and mothers as parents-in-chief.  As dual-earner families have grown in numbers, and younger men and women report more egalitarian attitudes regarding paid work and parenting, this all seems to make good sense.

However, the particular system of Shared Parental Leave that was introduced in the UK has done little to shift the dial in practice, in terms of who does what.  It does not come with a realistic level of wage replacement, nor does it represent a means whereby fathers have their own entitlement to parental leave; rather it is a method for women to transfer leave to their partners during the first year of their child’s lives, after they have used up the initial weeks of non-transferable maternity leave. The government estimated that the policy would be taken up by 2-8% of parents, and evidence collected since, suggests that even this figure may have been optimistic.  As the Committee’s report sums up: ‘The Government’s objective is for mothers and fathers to share the task of caring for their children more equally. The current shared parental leave policy will not achieve this on a large scale, as the Government’s own estimates of take-up show’.

In order to address the low take-up issue, the Government has embarked on a new campaign, ‘share the joy‘ which publicises Shared Parental Leave, showing couples who have used it, talking up the benefits of both parents being able to work and to take leave during their baby’s first year.  But without higher levels of pay for Shared Parental Leave, it is hard to see how raising awareness will increase the attractiveness of the package.  And while, of course, caring for babies and children can often be joyful and rewarding, what many parents are looking for is a policy which will enable then to share the load of meals, laundry, appointments as well as the joys of parenting.  As today’s report says, ‘[the] campaign to promote shared parental leave is welcome, but does not constitute a plan of action for achieving wider societal change.

If we’ve learnt anything from other countries, it is that getting to that point takes time.  The ‘latte papas’, the much-vaunted buggy pushers of Sweden’s urban landscape, only reached a critical mass because of decades of policy tweaking. Sweden first changed the law regarding leave in 1974, when maternity leave was changed to parental leave, for which both mothers and fathers were eligible.  However, there was an option for men to sign over their parental leave to their partners – in 1994 it was discovered that most did so, meaning that only 10% of parental leave days were actually used by men.  In order to attain the gender equality envisaged by the original policy, the government introduced a ‘daddy quota’ of 30 days leave in 1994.  If fathers didn’t use this quota, the month of leave was lost from the couple’s total entitlement.  This policy had immediate impact on fathers’ participation in early parenting, and dedicated leave for fathers spread as a policy throughout Scandinavia.  In the intervening years, the amount of leave for men has been increased repeatedly, and the Nordic countries regularly top international indices measuring both gender equality and happiness, or life satisfaction (incidentally, today is also the International Day of Happiness, and the Finns top the UN’s index this year).

At the end of last year the Telegraph reported that the Swedish government was looking to increase their ‘daddy quota’ to 5 months, to further enhance gender equality.  Perhaps a test of how embedded such policies have become, is that in the early days of parental leave in Sweden, sceptics complained that men just used their days to go elk hunting;  now in the West of Sweden where an elk hunting week is an annual tradition, they are looking change the rules for subsidised childcare to mean that parents can have an ‘elk days’ entitlement, without their partners having to take holiday to accommodate the hunt ….

Meanwhile, back in Britain, the Nordic experience of dedicated leave for fathers has long been cited as a preferred solution to the problem of gender imbalances in take-up of parental leave.  Today’s report goes so far as to recommend that the government considers replacing the current system of Shared Parental Leave with a Nordic-style independent entitlement for fathers.  The Women and Equalities Committee suggests a 12-week period of paternal leave, with the first four weeks paid at a capped wage replacement rate, and the rest at statutory levels.  While the costs of such a scheme are not inconsiderable, there is scope for them to be balanced by greater participation in the workforce by mothers.  There are still plenty of barriers to the success of such a policy – not least the slowness of government machinery.  Elsewhere in the report there are recommendations related to flexible working which are not slated for review until 2019, and Brexit will keep everyone busy at least until then.  There are also wider barriers, in the shape of prevailing workplace culture, and the long reach of gender stereotypes. But as the Swedish experience shows, we might be getting somewhere with this type of policy in 20 years’ time.  Springing in to action? Maybe not, but perhaps, at last, a kickstart.

 

 

Many happy returns?

Two policies aimed at narrowing the gender gap in earning and caring have recently attracted attention.  The first, shared parental leave, introduced 2 years ago, has been up for assessment of take-up and impact; the second, a government scheme to encourage returners to public sector professions, was unveiled at the end of the summer.

These two eye-catching initiatives share an important underlying feature: they are operating on shoestring budgets.  Shared Parental Leave – which was touted as a response to ‘Edwardian’ patterns of division of labour –  ended up as a scheme where the government’s own estimates of take-up ran at an underwhelming 2-8% of fathers.  In fact, research conducted since its introduction, indicates that take-up may be even lower – one recently quoted survey in the Guardian found fewer than 1 in 1000 employees had taken Shared Parental Leave; it’s reckoned that fewer than 9000 fathers took it up in the year to March 2017.  Set against 695,000 births per year, progress is slow indeed.

So, what are the reasons for low take-up? Shared parental leave is, in fact, a system of transfer of mothers’ maternity leave to fathers, rather than an independent entitlement for men. It therefore excludes many families where women are not entitled to maternity leave.  Next there’s the crucial issue of pay: while many employers provide enhanced maternity leave packages, Shared Parental Leave is paid at a Statutory Maternity Pay levels – currently around £140 per week.  This contrasts with more widely used schemes overseas, where men have an individual entitlement to leave, and payment is set at a generous fraction of actual wages.  As we still live in a world where many fathers are chief wage earners in families, few can afford the loss of income inherent in the British system. Thirdly, there’s the culture thing: taking leave is often viewed as a threat to future promotion prospects, and so men are often reluctant to volunteer for it. The cynic might say, that having seen what happens to many women’s careers, who can blame them? …

This brings us to initiative number two – the government’s new schemes for people who have taken time out of the workplace.   Five million pounds have been pledged to cover three public sector professions: social work, the civil service, and allied health professions (e.g. paramedics, speech therapists and radiographers).  This amounts to 100 places for returners to social work, 50 for civil servants, and 300 returnships for allied health professions.  As somewhere in excess of half a million people work in these areas, this seems something of a drop in the ocean. In the private sector, returnship programmes are becoming more popular, and the government is currently consulting further on these.

These initiatives accompany high employment rates for mothers, and three-quarters of economically inactive mothers say that they would like to return to work.  As ever, mothers of the youngest children are least likely to be employed, so sharing care in the early years is likely to be key to women’s future progression in employment, and also opens up the possibility of men doing more caring work.  With around half of younger fathers saying that they would like a less stressful job, or that they would be prepared to take a pay cut in order to contribute more at home, governments should be thinking creatively about re-balancing the workforce to improve life for parents and children alike.  But creative thinking is not enough. In a climate of wage stagnation and economic uncertainty, statutory pay levels are too low to be a feasible option for many parents contemplating shared leave; and returnships will only be transformational for carers when they are both more widely available, and less associated with the ‘mummy track’.  In fairness to the government, they have made their returner schemes open to men as well as women, but given the current imbalances in who takes time off, this may be a bit cart before horse.

The frustrating thing in all this, is that lack of transformational change is entirely predictable: on Shared Parental Leave, policy experts and civil society groups explained that without dedicated periods of leave for fathers and adequate rates of pay, the scheme would fail to take off; and while returnships are welcome to reincorporate skilled women into work, they will also fail to make major headway if they are not accompanied by wider efforts to prevent mothers from falling out of the workforce in the first place.

Again and again, flexible working arrangements have been found to be vital in retaining parents in the workforce, and to job satisfaction.  While there may be reluctance to commit major resources to these issues, the evidence shows that investment often has good returns. Homeworking and flexible working may raise productivity, and can reduce costs by enhancing staff retention rates. In Scandinavia, it has been found that the more months of leave fathers take, the higher the subsequent earnings for their partners.  The Economist reported this week that a German policy to provide a right to kindergarten places was 60% paid for by the taxes of women returners – and of course these women are likely go on paying taxes throughout their lives.  If our government could actually commit to proper investment in a more equal workforce (as well as in the childcare sector which is currently suffering from under-investment in the flagship 30 hours free childcare scheme) returning to work might generate the kind of monetary returns the economy currently needs.  You could call it a realist’s money tree.