The Childcare Problem

An increasing number of women are being forced to give up their jobs or reduce their hours because of the high cost of childcare, with long term effects on women’s career prospects. The average cost of full-time childcare is currently £385 a month but this rises to £729 for children under the age of two. Child tax credits are being cut while the cost of childcare increases, and those trying to buy childcare find provision patchy in both availability and quality.

Among those casting about for solutions to this seemingly intractable problem is the Social Market Foundation, which has proposed the introduction of a ‘use now, pay later’ childcare scheme. Under this National Childcare Contribution Scheme (NCCS), the government would provide upfront financial support for formal childcare, which parents would pay for later through the tax system.

NCCS is based on the student loan finance system. Parents would be able to access up to £10,000 from the government using a voucher scheme, paying back contributions once the income of the ‘main earner’ in a family hit a certain level. Parents would stop monthly repayments once they had paid back the amount in full, or after 20 years. Low-earning parents would not pay in full what they had initially received, but this underpayment by some parents would be recovered through a 3% above inflation interest rate on the amount borrowed.

The design of NCCS makes a number of assumptions. It assumes that parents do not object to expensive childcare and are happy to borrow money to pay for it. It assumes, presumably, that childcare providers will be willing or able to meet the infrastructure costs, like installing smart card facilities and administering aspects of the scheme. It assumes that the childcare sector, which has low margins and is characterised by unstable, low-paid employment, is sustainable.

Solutions such as NCCS, which tinker with the demand-side, do not address the fundamental problem. Childcare is extremely expensive from the perspective of the purchasing parents, and represents a significant allocation from family budgets. It is, however, very difficult to run a good quality childcare service funded only by what parents are willing and able to pay.

There is overwhelming evidence that more radical, less individualised solutions to the childcare conundrum are worth considering. A recent cost-benefit analysis by IPPR has shown that universal childcare for pre-school aged children pays a net return to the government of £20,050 (over four years) in terms of tax revenue minus the cost of childcare for every woman who returns to full-time employment after one year of maternity leave.

Affordable, universal childcare is associated with higher female employment rates, particularly for mothers. Increasing maternal employment maintains a woman’s link to the labour market, increases family income and also increases the tax base which, in turn, generates a positive cost-benefit return to the government. Wage equality within families even reduces other consequences of women’s inequality, like domestic abuse. Countries with higher maternal employment rates, such as Scandinavian countries, tend to have affordable and high-quality childcare provision alongside comprehensive, shared parental leave policies.

A universal childcare system might also offer the possibility of addressing the undervaluation of caring work. 99 per cent of those working in the early years and education sector are women. In 2009, the average pay for a qualified nursery nurse was £6.65 per hour, with this rising to £8.82 per hour for managers. Still seen as ‘women’s work’, the undervaluing of the role and the consequent low pay is a major contributing factor to the high turnover of staff and, in turn, undermining the supply of a high-quality service.

The challenge of how good quality childcare should be funded is unlikely to be resolved in the immediate future. Welfare reform by the UK Government has placed families’ ability to pay for childcare on an even more precarious footing. It’s vital for the economy, for women, and for children that any solution implemented in Scotland tackles the inequalities women face when trying to combine a career with parenthood, and in working within the childcare sector itself.

Close the Gap newsround (9)

This weeks newsround includes articles from the Herald, The Guardian and others. Topics include occupational segregation, gender stereotyping and equal pay.

NEWS - SCOTLAND

Herald Scotland

MP calls for more female radio presenters on BBC

NEWS - UK

BBC News Manchester

Bury equal pay case: Council settles with dinner ladies

Financial Times

Richard Lambert on performance and pay

O'Donnell derides business approach to gender

The Guardian

Davos: if women are the future, where are they?

Hollywood women unite to break through the celluloid ceiling

Why are women stuck at 17% of top jobs?

Television 'misrepresents' young people and older women

Coast presenter Alice Roberts appointed professor of public engagement in science

The Telegraph

'BBC should be scutinised for sexism and ageism', says MP

Human Resource Magazine

Lehman sisters: is there a connection between gender and ethics?

EVENTS

International Women's Day - Women in Scotland 2012 - The Big Picture

Close the Gap will be speaking at Engender's Women in Scotland 2012 Conference being held on International Women's Day Wednesday 8 March in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, 10am-4.30pm

The event is an opportunity to take part in discussions around; gender budgeting, occupational segregation, welfare reform and poverty, childcare, women in the economy and many more issues. For more details about this FREE event click on the link above.

UK Resource Centre for Women in SET

UK Resource Centre for Women in SET are hosting workshops on Women's Enterprise in TV. There are various dates and venues in February and March.

Inspiring Women's Enterprise in TV - One day Workshop

Pay, incentives, gender, and the case of the RBS Chief Executive

The subject of Stephen Hester’s bonus has been exercising commentators on politics, business, and labour relations. It has variously been framed as an issue of Stephen Hester’s honour, as a skirmish in the global war for talent, and of the awkward symbolism of one man receiving so much from the publically-owned pay pot while public sector pay freezes bite for other workers.

Hester’s bonus occupies the most recent paragraph in the story about pay, incentives and fairness that has emerged from the banking crisis. The engineers of opaque CDOs, who built houses of cards at the heart of august institutions, did so in part because they were incentivised to take risks, and because they bore no personal costs for their eventual collapse. The Walker review identifies remuneration as an key area of risk that boards need to bring in scope, to call time on pay policy that acts against the medium-term interests of the institution that is paying the salaries and issuing bonuses.

Chuka Umunna MP, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, reminded listeners of the UK Government’s commitment that banks with majority public ownership would  pay bonuses to their executives commensurate with those banks meeting the Merlin targets. RBS has missed its Merlin targets for lending to small businesses, which is of no small concern to SMEs seeking capital to stay afloat. There is, it would seem, a disconnect between executive pay and the corporate behaviours that the pay is intended to incentivise and then reward.

Close the Gap has done work with a number of UK-based banks, looking at the issue of gender and reward, and has spoken to hundreds of women working across the financial services sector. These discussions paint a picture of pay structures that have the potential for great unfairness. Target-setting often functions in a way to disincentivise flexible working or part-time working, and bonuses for junior (mostly female) staff are sometimes linked to the performance of the senior (usually male) staff they support. Line managers often reward in their own image, and performance management frameworks appear to value stereotypically male attributes (aggression, risk taking) above stereotypically female attributes (team-working, building relationships).

The introduction of performance related pay, which is now a characteristic of pay policy in financial services, usually increases the gender pay gap within individual companies. It takes effort and commitment to mitigate the unintended, but nonetheless real, negative effects on women’s pay. Some banks in Scotland have made real headway on this, while others have not.

The issue, as Walker sets out, is one of managing risk. The financial services sector has not seen the torrent of equal pay cases that have swept through the pay policies of local government and the NHS, but it is not invulnerable. Close the Gap has seen evidence of unjustifiable differences in pay in some large financial services companies. However, the issue is not just about managing immediate financial and reputational risks. It is also about incentivising the types of behaviour that benefit companies and the wider economy. Scotland needs confident financial institutions that will keep capital flowing through the recovery. Scotland’s financial services sector needs staff who can build business relationships across and within communities, who can innovate in the design of products and services. Our discussion about reward must shift its focus out of the executive suite and tackle the more complex question of how, or whether, companies can use reward to drive the behaviours in which we all have a stake.

Close the Gap Newsround (8)

This weeks newsround includes articles from the Herald Scotland, The Guardian and others. Topics include occupational segregation, gender stereotyping and poverty.

NEWS - SCOTLAND

Herald Scotland

Female professorships reveal 'glass ceiling' at universities With a quote from Close the Gap

NEWS  - UK

The Guardian

Campaign to get more women on BBC's Today programme

Typing-It's complicated

Profile of Sheryl Sandberg Facebook COO

The welfare reform bill will erode women's financial independence

Boy raised without gender stereotypes

The woman's part: is single-sex casting sexist?

Reuters

Celluloid Ceiling: Women Comprised Only 5% of Directors in 2011

Civil Society Media

Reinforced glass ceiling in the voluntary sector

Age UK

Women more likely to be poor in old age

Huffington Post

Why women should become mentors

EVENTS

International Women's Day - Women in Scotland 2012 - The Big Picture

Close the Gap will be speaking at Engender's Women in Scotland 2012 Conference being held on International Women's Day Wednesday 8 March in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, 10am-4.30pm

The event is an opportunity to take part in discussions around; gender budgeting, occupational segregation, welfare reform and poverty, childcare, women in the economy and many more issues. For more details about this FREE event click on the link above.

UK Resource Centre for Women in SET

UK Resource Centre for Women in SET are hosting workshops on Women's Enterprise in TV. There are various dates and venues in February and March.

Inspiring Women's Enterprise in TV - One day Workshop