The Labour campaigning juggernaut has featured a number of ambitious goals to reshape the economy. The year 2030 has emerged as a common point of reference. That is the year they pledge that – under a Labour government – every home in the UK will possess free broadband and, following some compromise with unions, a watered down reduction of carbon emissions.

Not to be stopped there, Labour claim they will shave 50 years off the fight to achieve gender pay parity, again reaching this milestone by 2030, rather than estimates from the Fawcett Society – reaffirmed by a hesitant Conservative Government – that it would not be achieved until 2080.

These goals are clearly ambitious, if likely to be unrealistic, and Labour should be commended for said ambition. Yet this begs the question as to how Labour can make up the current 17.3% gap (the average man earns 17.3% more than the average woman in the UK) in just over ten years. Who would benefit under this wide-berth policy goal and who would lose out?

 

Explaining the gap

The gender pay gap has persisted in developed economies for a number of reasons. Most frequently cited is the ‘motherhood penalty’ enacted upon women leaving the profession to have a child. In the UK the growth of the gap with age all but confirms this suspicion. Unfortunately, this has been taken on by pay gap naysayers as an autonomous decision by the mother to sacrifice their career, thus explaining the gaps as men and women develop throughout their life.

While it does appear to be a contributing factor to the gender pay gap, the assumption that women will never be fully committed to their career thanks to familial planning has become a troublesome type of confirmation bias among employers. Indeed, a third of private employers in the UK believe a woman should disclose their plans to have children at the interview stage. This is unsurprising, when statutory maternity leave outweighs paternity leave by 52 weeks to 2 weeks respectively.

Align this to social expectations, and we see an insidious pattern that works to solidify these norms, dampening the outlook for sustained improvements. Analysis that controls for this phenomenon, by measuring full-time earnings, reveals that a smaller yet still prominent pay gap remains – at a median of 8.9% across the UK.

 

Northern Ireland’s track record

It is in this light that Northern Ireland is basking in the glow of unusually positive press. At 10.1%, the gender pay here is lower than any other region by more than 4%. Disaggregation shows better news still – the median full-time female worker actually earns more hourly than the median man in Northern Ireland.

These figures would imply that, while it has failed to rid itself of the characteristics driving macro-level pay gaps, Northern Ireland has in effect solved the problems of bias affecting pay at the micro-level. However, characteristics behind this anomaly explain the obstacles in replicating progress across the rest of the UK, and reinforce the stereotypes behind the stubbornness of the gap.

Northern Ireland is to an extent a victim of stability, reinforcing patriarchal working patterns and in turn resulting in sub-sectoral disparities. The region has a meaty public sector, nominally accounting for approximately 30% of employment, and its share of top-paying positions regularly falls below the rest of the UK.

For example, as a share of its population Northern Ireland has the lowest share of people in management positions or ‘professional’ occupations. This is reinforced on a gender basis. There are 34,000 men working in top occupations in Northern Ireland, compared to 15,000 women. The full-time argument of parity holds less weight when we consider how small the share of part-time work there is.

In fact, knowledge of a material positive gap in some metrics for women may reduce the urgency to address other shortcomings, be it the fact that there are no transparency laws in private sector company pay; that only three of the 100 biggest companies in the country are run by women; or that one of the two FTSE 350 companies without a female board member – Kainos – is based in Belfast.

Companies like these thrive in Northern Ireland, where following the shutdown of the Executive a UK-wide 2016 law on Gender Pay gap reporting for companies employing over 250 people remains exempt from the region.

Deeper analysis of the data shouldn’t diminish the achievements made in Northern Ireland’s contribution to the quest for parity, but its sub-par growth and over-reliance on traditional sectors – particularly on a gender-split basis – make it difficult to see how Labour may replicate this record across the UK.

Aligned to that are demographics. Northern Ireland holds a deeply homogenised white population, which despite years of social unrest upholds fairly consistent cultural values. The last UK census – in 2011 – estimated the UK’s white share of the population at 87%. At the same time Northern Ireland’s was estimated to be 98%.

Impediments to female labour progression are inherently cultural. Accounting for this in more diverse locations – like London or the West Midlands – will require more astute policy leverage.

 

The challenge ahead

Ultimately, Labour’s policies – a £10 an hour living wage, pay scales and business pay reporting – will all do their bit directly and indirectly to improve the outcome for female workers, but deep social changes are necessary to rejig the pay reward for women.

Increasing paternity leave from the current paltry two weeks would be a start. Initiating more proactive nudging policies would further enhance those benefits, as a dialogue opens up about the shared responsibilities of parenting, and the stigma around these decisions diminishes. In addition, a radical policy akin to America’s race-based affirmative action could propel a number of women into more senior roles.

The ability to envisage reward for work, and the knowledge that the responsibility for childcare support falls equally on the mother and father would allow a reassessment of goals. Likewise, while more women than men are graduating from university each year, there are arguably not enough of these women leaving as engineers or computer scientists. Rebalancing pay while maintaining productivity goals requires a policy rethink here.

So while 2030 seems like a long time to implement policy, current obstacles redefine the challenge. The Conservatives may be wary of embarrassment in sticking to any kind of target, evidenced by the absence of gender pay policy in their manifesto, but continuity of the norm makes even the idea of 2080 appear ambitious. That Labour’s goals are unrealistic is an indictment of the current practices in the labour market, yet the Conservative’s effective dismissal of any target may be a big mistake.