|
Valerie Bryson
© Valerie Bryson 2008
There are many routes into poverty in the UK. A particularly effective one
is to spend time looking after other people, a route that is most often
taken by women, who are twice as likely as men to be poor (TUC 2008a). Conversely,
most wealthy individuals delegate care to others. We all need to be cared
for at some stage in our lives, and we have a collective interest in living
in a society in which the next generation of citizens will be well brought
up. Any discussion of class and inequality therefore needs to address the
ways in which care is distributed and rewarded, as a matter of enlightened
self-interest as well as justice.
The problems
When we talk about child poverty in Britain, we are disproportionately talking
about poverty in lone, female headed families. When we talk about pensioner
poverty, we are talking mainly about women. And when we talk about low pay,
we are including many forms of paid care work, mainly done by women. These
aspects of poverty are interconnected, and reflect the values of a society
that prioritises individual rather than collective needs and responsibilities,
reifies paid employment as the primary way that citizens contribute to society,
and forgets about the necessary caring and domestic work that has traditionally
been done by women.
Despite some positive changes since 1997, levels of affordable childcare
and conditions of employment in the UK still make it difficult to combine
caring responsibilities with reasonably paid work. Many women drop out of
paid employment or work part-time when they become mothers, while even full-time
workers face a clear ‘motherhood penalty’ in terms of pay, as
their careers are often held back by discrimination in a long-hours culture
that sidelines those who take parental leave or seek flexible working arrangements
(EOC, 2007; TUC 2008a; Fawcett, 2008). For lone mothers the result is often
the kind of poverty that is recognised in official statistics, while many
other mothers experience a personal poverty that is hidden within the family.
When parents are in paid work, someone else has to look after their children.
Rather than being valued and rewarded as a skilled profession, childcare
is often badly paid and seen as an occupation for low-aspiring girls who
lack the skills or motivation to follow a career. The undervaluing of childcare
is dramatically clear in apprenticeship pay rates: while the average weekly
pay of apprentices in 2005 was £137, nearly half of childcare apprentices
(nearly all of whom were female) received less than £80 (EOC 2006;
TUC, 2008b). Many equal opportunities commentators argue that girls need
to be encouraged to choose better paying careers, and the Education and
Skills Bill promises that careers advice will challenge gender stereotypes
for both boys and girls. However, it is unlikely that boys will be attracted
to care work while it is so badly paid, and the key problem is surely not
that some girls persist in wanting to look after children but that this
crucially important work should be badly rewarded and seen as a negative
choice.
The ‘motherhood penalty’ persists into old age. Today, many
elderly women who left paid employment to look after their family (often
thereby enabling their husband to earn a family wage) have no independent
pension. Although caring for a child or another family member can now count
towards a state pension, women remain much less likely than men to build
up pension provision. Many also find it difficult to combine full-time work
with supporting or caring for elderly parents and are therefore unable to
compensate for earlier interruptions to employment by working into their
sixties. The overall result is that many women face poverty at various stages
in their lives, not because they have failed to contribute to society, but
because their important contributions have not been valued.
Like childcare, adult care is poorly paid, and it is often an entry-level
job for migrant workers, displacing the UK’s ‘care deficit’
onto their country of origin as they leave their own children and parents
behind (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2003; Datta et al, 2006). Despite being
badly paid, it is clear that many care workers are deeply committed to their
work, but that it is difficult for them to provide the kind of nurturing
care they would like as provision is increasingly rationed and subject to
rigid expectations of cost efficiency. As the population ages, pressures
on care workers are likely to increase and the needs of frail and elderly
people are increasingly unlikely to be met.
Potential solutions
We need a greater sense of shared responsibility for care provision if women
are not to be penalised. Some important, although far too small, steps in
this direction have been taken since 1997, particularly the introduction
of a national childcare strategy, parental and paternity leave and the right
to request flexible working; paid carers have also disproportionately benefited
from the introduction of the minimum wage. What we need now is a robust
package of measures building on these gains, including much more generous
parental and family leave provision, positive steps to encourage men to
take on family responsibilities and a minimum wage that is also a living
wage. We also need to reject market-driven reforms that fail to understand
that good quality care provided by well-paid professional workers can never
be both profitable and affordable, and that the imposition of profit-driven
rationality destroys the nurturing relationships that good care involves.
In brief, we can only break the link between poverty, gender and care in
the context of a much more equal and collectively oriented society oriented
to meeting human needs rather than simply maximising profit and growth.
Conversely, a more equal society will only be possible if gender and care
are treated as central issues rather than as optional extras.
References
Equal Opportunities Commission (2006) Free to Choose. Tackling Gender
Barriers to Better Jobs
Equal Opportunities Commission (2007) Completing the Revolution
Fawcett Society (2008) Sexism and the City
TUC (2008a) Closing the Gender Gap
TUC (2008b) Still More (Better Paid) Jobs for the Boys. Apprenticeships
and Gender Segregation
Valerie Bryson is Professor of Politics at the University
of Huddersfield. She expands on the ideas in this article in Gender
and the Politics of Time. Feminist theory and contemporary debates (The
Policy Press, 2007).
Subscribe to Soundings a journal of politics and culture
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
