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LSE: Public lectures and events
The Co-Director of the LSE Commission on Gender, Inequality and Power talks about gender and inequality in the economy
00:11:05
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Transcript21 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the podcast series for the Gender Institute at lsc. In today's podcast, we talk to Professor Diane Perrons about the Gender Inequality and Power Commission, what it is, what it hopes to achieve, and recent discussions about gender and the economy.
- [00:17]
B
The Commission on Gender Inequality and Power is concerned with understanding the complex and multi dimensional character of inequality and power imbalances between women and men with respect to four key economy, law, politics, media, culture, and in that process, in looking at those four areas, we will also be looking at cross cutting themes with respect to rights, power, work, life, family, balance and violence.
- [00:46]
A
So you're looking at the sorts of things that create and sustain gender imbalances. But why do we need a commission?
- [00:51]
B
The idea of having a commission is so that we can exchange academic knowledge with practitioners and policy makers. So the idea is to make our knowledge accessible to and use in public debates and at the same time to ensure that we also learn from practical experiences as well. What was really interesting and important about the first session on gender and inequality was the way in which we were beginning to develop an interdisciplinary perspective on questions of gender and the economy. And that will contribute, I think, to a much broader and deeper understanding of the processes which are driving gender inequality today.
- [01:36]
A
Now, you mentioned the Commission's first event, which was looking at gender and the economy. What sorts of issues were being explored there?
- [01:42]
B
First of all, we looked at the unequal positioning of women and men in the economy. We looked at patterns, processes and outcomes. We looked at some of the broad patterns of economic inequalities from a transnational perspective. We looked at macro and micro levels, the European situation. We look specifically at income inequalities and how they were differentiated not only between women and men, but also among different ethnic and racial groups in the United Kingdom. And then we focused specifically on the wage gap.
- [02:13]
A
Now, you looked at a number of interesting case studies, including how women migrant workers tend to be overrepresented in certain sectors of the labour market, but also issues of violence against women, perhaps not something people might instinctively link to the economy. What was the focus of those discussions?
- [02:29]
B
We looked at the implications of this unequal balance, first of all, in terms of thinking about how women are overrepresented in poverty. And secondly, the actual economic costs of gender based violence, what it cost to the economy of having perpetuation of gendered violence, particularly male violence against women, how that impacts on lost days of work, costs, on the health service and so on, amongst others. We then turn to the crucial question, really from a policy perspective, about how this can be responded to and challenged what sort of policies might be introduced to try to redress some of these adverse conditions.
- [03:08]
A
Yes, and here the focus was on identifying an economic rationale for parental leave and quotas. What was the thinking there?
- [03:16]
B
There are other rationales for implementing quotas and parental leaves. Even from an economic point of view, the efficiency of drawing on the whole population rather than half the pop can be demonstrated as having positive effects. And then we looked at a specific case of Norway, is often held up as a very good example. And indeed it can clearly be seen when quotas, both with respect to positioning on boardrooms and in terms of ensuring that daddies as well as mummies take some of the leave. And that's not just by choice, but actually if they don't take that leave, they lose that leave. It's on a use it or lose it basis, then it has positive effects. What it does is it ensures that men take more leave than previously. It ensures that there are more women on the boards of companies. Now, whether that in turn then goes on to have broader effects on men's role in childcare or women's influence in organisations has yet to be found.
- [04:19]
A
So when it came to what's been happening with the economy in recent times, what were the key things to emerge from your discussions about the impact on women?
- [04:27]
B
The economic crisis, although initially it was men's jobs rather than women's jobs that were lost, the second round effects of the crisis, in terms of cutbacks in public expenditure, disproportionately impacted in a negative way on women's employment. And that's more or less true throughout Europe. And the reason for this, of course, is because women, more so than men, are overrepresented in the public sector. And that in turn often is linked to the more preferable, more family friendly employment policies that exist in the public sector. In terms of income inequalities, then one can see that not only are these very evident between women and men, but also if you look more carefully, then you find that ethnic and racial differences emerge, with ethnic minorities, particularly people belonging to the Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups, experiencing the lowest income as far as the gender wage gap is concerned, whereas there's much less of a gap up until the age of about 30. Beyond that age, sort of late 20s, 30s. This is when the pay gap emerges most strongly and therefore the connection with child care is very evident. Having said that, it's also important to note, however, that there is a gap at an earlier age. So resolving the pay gap, just through thinking about different divisions of Labour between women and men with respect to childcare, although that's important, it will not, of its own, be a sufficient condition.
- [06:06]
A
I'm keen to talk to you a little bit about your own work and what you think are the really key things that we should be thinking about when it comes to securing gender equality in the economy and what the challenges are.
- [06:16]
B
One of the other issues which we need to think about is the whole way in which the economy itself is conceptualised is in many ways biased. When one's thinking about the economy, how it's defined, it only deals with half of the economy. It only deals with the public world of paid work and the private world, or largely private world, because quite a lot of domestic work and childcare is now commoditized, is very much hidden from thinking about the economy. And the consequence of this, and this is something that was picked up in one of the papers, is that the economy tends to be seen as an object in and of its own right, and that public policy should be directly directed to what's in the interests of the economy. So, in terms of maintaining a relatively low level of inflation, trying to reduce unemployment and maintaining overall macroeconomic stability is prioritized. And with respect to the current debt, you know, debt is seen to be a real problem in Europe and the UK at the moment, and yet it's only public debt that is in difficulty. Europe as a whole has never been more wealthy. Private capital is enormous. And if one looks at what's happened over the last years, the level of taxation on top incomes has massively fallen.
- [07:34]
A
So in your mind, is there a quick and easy solution to this?
- [07:37]
B
If one wanted to resolve the debt problem quite quickly, a very easy and immediate way of doing so would be to raise taxes even to what they were in 1980, rather than trying to cut public expenditure. So the overall macroeconomic policy environment is one which is fundamentally biased. The economy should work in people's interests rather than people working for the economy, which is just an abstract entity. And yet this is clearly to the benefit of those people in the higher income groups who in the United Kingdom are disproportionately male, concentrated in the southeast of England and employed in the banking and finance sector. So despite the ways in which it was the crisis and problems and bad behavior, if you like, of the banking and finance sector that led to the situation of the crisis in 2008, it's ordinary men and women who are paying for this crisis.
- [08:37]
A
We're heading into a general election next year. What would you say are the key things that policymakers really need to take notice of.
- [08:43]
B
I mean, to be quite honest, I don't think any of the political parties really have a very clear view about. I don't think anyone really questions the idea that we need to tackle the debt. And we need to tackle the debt through cuts in public expenditure. And I think that issue really needs to be tackled. I think the only party that potentially addresses this question is the Greens. You know, they seem to be the only ones who have some notion that there is an alternative way of thinking about the economy in terms of providing for people's needs, rather than thinking about the economy as an abstract entity.
- [09:21]
A
I wonder what your thoughts are on how the debate about who's to blame for the debt crisis is currently being conducted.
- [09:27]
B
When you look at the amount of public expenditure which actually goes on benefits for people who are out of work, it's very, very small. The vast majority of public expenditure goes on pensions, goes on the health service. And so to cut further, the amount of money or resources which are devoted towards, through no fault of their own in most cases are without work means that those people will have to be treated in an extremely harsh way in order to make the kind of level of savings that governments are trying to make. One would want to support parties that had more family friendly policies, that supported equality's policies. But these issues are not really being highlighted in the general election at the moment. I think there's a real task involved in getting the significance of gender inequality back to the forefront of public policy. There's a lot of support amongst young women today for a much more feminist kind of politics, and yet one doesn't see that as strongly represented as one would like to see in media debates at the moment. And I think that's a real problem.
- [10:39]
A
Professor Diane Perens is co director of the Gender Inequality and Power Commission. You can find out more about its work and activities at www.lsc.forward/genderinstitute and you can also follow us on Twitter @lsc gender tweet. This was a research podcast's product.