Gender on the Agenda – a NIACE seminar Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - 17:03

The current policy focus on skills for employability does not pay any in-depth attention to gender, says NIACE, and there is a tendency to treat skills as gender neutral. This was the main discussion at the NIACE women, skills and work seminar - Gender on the Agenda - held in London yesterday, with speakers including the MPs Meg Munn and Gordon Marsden.

Gender on the Agenda addressed current gender aspects of the skills agenda which have become relatively unacknowledged in recent policy debate and learning and skills practice, tending to present skills as gender neutral.

Areas of particular concern for women's skills needs include:

• more women are entering the professions, in particular some branches of medicine and law, however high paid employment remains male dominated
• employment traditionally taken up by women (the five Cs - cleaning, catering, caring, cashiering and clerical) tends to be low paid and frequently part-time (around 83% of part time workers are women)
• women from ethnic minorities, especially Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Somali women and those who have limited written and spoken English, are amongst those with least access to the labour market, are the lowest paid and experience the worst conditions of employment
• women's part time work tends to be characterised by reduced job security, low pay, fewer career prospects and less access to training and development
• access to training and skills development is highly gendered; for instance in Modern Apprenticeships, around 97% of early years carers are women and they will earn significantly less than the 99% of male plumbers

Jane Ward, Senior Programme Director at NIACE, said:

"Despite the Equal Pay Act that came into force in 1970 and subsequent equalities legislation, there remain significant gaps between women and men in skills, occupations, work opportunities, pay, and access to training. These are likely to intensify during a period of recession where women and men will be differentially affected by job losses, the pay and opportunity gaps, and the constraints and barriers to women accessing new employment or skills retraining.

The recommendations of the recent National Skills Forum report, Closing the gender skills gap published in February 2009 provide useful directions and we can learn from the programmes targeted at women in previous recessions to develop policy and practice responses that address the barriers women face in accessing the labour market and learning and skills training in current contexts."