Part-time employment and the gender gap in low pay for UK employees: what changed over the period 1996–2016?

ABSTRACT

This article assesses the contribution of part-time employment to the gender gap in low pay for UK employees 1996–2016. Over this period, there has been a sustained decline in the importance of part-time employment as a contributing factor to the gender gap in low pay. This is largely due to the fact that the link between part-time employment and low pay has become weaker over time (shifts in the gender composition of the part-time workforce are found to be less important). However, part-time work continues to play a crucial role in shaping persistent gender inequality in low pay for UK employees.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article étudie en quoi, entre 1996 et 2016, l’emploi à temps partiel a contribué aux inégalités salariales entre hommes et femmes dans le cas des employés britanniques à faibles revenus. Au cours de cette période, l’importance de l’emploi à temps partiel en tant que facteur d’inégalités salariales entre hommes et femmes à faibles revenus n’a cessé de diminuer. Cela est dû, en grande partie, au fait que la corrélation entre emploi à temps partiel et bas salaire s’est affaiblie au fil du temps (alors même que les changements dans la composition par sexe de la main-d’œuvre travaillant à temps partiel se sont avérés moins importants). Cependant, l’emploi à temps partiel continue de contribuer de manière significative à la production d’inégalités de genre parmi les employés britanniques à faibles revenus.

KEYWORDS:

• Low pay
• wages
• gender gap
• part-time employment
• working hours
• decomposition

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Faibles revenus salariaux
• rémunération
• inégalités salariales entre hommes et femmes
• emploi à temps partiel
• heures de travail
• décomposition

Acknowledgements

Thanks are owed to Erzsébet Bukodi and Fran Bennett, as well as three anonymous reviewers, for helpful and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Labour Force Service (LSF) data are available from the UK data archive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Labour Force Survey (LFS) data are available from the UK Data Service (https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk)

2 Data are missing for three calendar quarters: Quarter 1 (January–March) 1999, 2001 and 2004. This is because data for key variables are not available (atypical earnings in Q1 1999, earnings and social class in Q1 2001, education in Q1 2004).

3 The alternative approach – using a separate threshold for men and women based on their respective wage distributions – is unsatisfactory because it partially obscures the phenomenon of interest. This approach would reveal the proportion of women who are low paid compared to other women, when substantive interest here lies in comparing rates of low pay for men and women

4 There is no option in the Labour Force Survey to indicate non-binary gender identity.

5 In the UK, both part-time workers and women are over-represented in the public sector, where low pay may be less common than in the private sector.

6 The adjusted gender gap reflects the effect of being female after controlling for differences in the observed characteristics of men and women in employment. Although we would expect the two lives to converge over time as the unadjusted odds decrease, it is less clear why the adjusted line would (temporarily) increase. This ‘residual’ component is sometimes interpreted as gender discrimination, but the increase might also reflect unobserved changes to the composition of men and women in employment. This trend could also stem from an issue with the data, although there are no known continuity issues regarding LFS sampling or measurement over this period.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) doctoral studentship.

Notes on contributors

Madeline Nightingale

Madeline Nightingale was a DPhil candidate in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford at this time this research was undertaken. Her research interests include wages, working hours and gender equality.