Alison Johnstone: We cannot let Covid widen gender pay gap further

According to the TUC, Scotland’s gender pay gap is 14.3%, the equivalent of 52 days unpaid work. That means women in Scotland on average effectively stopped being paid on Tuesday. Clearly, this is not an economy that works for everyone.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made this situation worse, because with women typically earning less and holding less secure jobs than men, they have been more vulnerable to layoffs and loss of livelihoods when businesses have struggled to stay afloat.

Along with lost income and being vulnerable to insecure work, there has also been an explosion in the kind of unpaid care and domestic work that often falls to women too.

What’s more, it’s also true that many of those working on the frontline of keeping us safe during this pandemic are women. Globally, 70% of health workers and first responders are women, yet the sector has one of the biggest gender pay gaps internationally.

READ MORE: Douglas Ross accused of climate change denial and 'anti-science drivel'

There’s a real concern across the world that any surge in poverty caused by the pandemic and lockdowns will also widen the gender poverty gap.

This is because we have an economy which rewards the pursuit of self-interest and devalues caring roles. It puts no economic value on mothering or caring for loved ones and silently assumes that if women are paid less then that’s because their labour is worth less.

At our party conference, the Scottish Greens launched a New Deal for Scotland’s workers. This is a strategy to empower workers and embed fair work practices in any attempt to build an economic recovery from Covid. We need to tackle poverty and build an economy that supports people and planet, not those who hoard their wealth in tax havens.

It’s clear that if we rebuild the public sector to reverse the erosion of rights, restore wages and the dignity of work and end zero-hour contracts this will benefit women.

If we’re going to build a recovery that values women’s work, we need to reflect that in the pay in jobs traditionally done by women. Many of these are also the jobs on the frontline of tackling the Covid-19 pandemic – like nursing, social care and education.

Even in these workforces dominated by women, a pay gap persists because men are far more likely to get senior roles. If you are a nurse or a primary teacher, you remain more likely to be promoted if you are a man.

Meanwhile, women are over-represented in the hospitality sector where we have seen many jobs lost or made even more precarious. The sectors worst hit by lockdown restrictions – hospitality, leisure, tourism and the arts – employ millions of women.

All of those who have been forced out of work have discovered one of the least generous social security systems in Europe. The UK’s safety net is full of holes, with the ratio of social security to wages the lowest it has ever been.

The economic impact of this pandemic on women must be reflected in what happens next. But although the Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Economic Recovery talks about “gender-sensitive sex-disaggregated data” it offers no solutions that could possibly be informed by this.

When we are looking at introducing new training programmes to reskill our workforce, these must be targeted for all those women who have lost their jobs during this crisis.

READ MORE: Lorna Slater: ‘Win or die’ electoral system isn’t functioning democracy

In the advisory group’s report there is also a lot of talk about digital infrastructure. This of course will be very important in the new normal, but as the Engender think tank points out, I would like to see childcare and social care be treated as infrastructure spending. That kind of shift in thinking could start to build an economy that can deliver women’s equality and rights, as well as building a better start in life for our children.

Any review of the care sector needs to recognise that women care workers are undervalued, underpaid and underprotected – just look at how hard it has been to get them tested and equipped with the necessary protective equipment during this pandemic.

The First Minister has done some good work in last year’s gender pay gap action plan and her National Advisory Council on Women and Girls. We can’t let all of that be undermined by a response to the economic challenges of the pandemic, Brexit and the climate emergency which resorts to the old ways of economic thinking that failed to recognise women’s work as equal.

Only by valuing the work that women do can Scotland build what the First Minister likes to call a wellbeing economy. It’s a central part of building a fairer, greener Scotland.