Syed Umar Ahmed

Explaining Gender Inequality in terms of wages  Introduction to Gender Based Inequality A phenomenon that influences the major part of the income groups, world's nations, religions and cultures, is termed as Gender-based inequality. When gender gap is being discussed by the scientists nowadays, they are usually mentioning the methodical dissimilarities in the results that are usually achieved in the labor market by both the women and men. These dissimilarities are observed in % format, concerning those women and men working in labor force, and their relative incomes or hourly wages and the types of occupations they choose.  The labor supply of women in the last decades, has experienced a profound rise, both in the developing as well as in the developed nations. For example, a drastic deviation was recorded in the US, concerning the female participation in the paid labor force, during the 20th century time : just a 17% of all US women having working ages, had participated in labor market, whereas by the year 2000, this figure had significantly increased to well above 60%.  However, no country in the world has yet reached equality between women and men, as reported by the Global Gender Gap Index 2007, the country with the highest rank pertaining to the gender gap scenario, had touched the figure of a bit more than 80%, whereas a bit more than 45% of the gender gap has been observed thus far for the lowest ranking nation.  Image Source Gender Pay Gap ( A Menace to Deal with ) At the central UK banking function, a gender pay gap of 59% would be revealed by HSBC, which is by far the highest as revealed by a UK bank, as per a lender’s report copy, focusing on the subject, that got disclosed subsequently after its publication on Thursday. A mean gender bonus gap of 86% at HSBC Bank Plc, will also be disclosed by the bank, which employs 23,507 people and is the largest among the 7 entities of the lender in the U.K as well.  British financial firm, has reported , that as per the government data,  the gender pay gap is by far the biggest reported, where few of the companies have still not furnished their figures subsequently after the deadline in April, where this deadline was set by Mr. Theresa, the Prime Minister, the past year. The continued gulf in earnings between men and women has attracted significant public attention over the past year or so, for almost 50 years since the passage of Britain’s equal pay act HSBC said its pay gap was largely accounted for by the company having fewer women in senior roles, in common with the other banks.  The difference between the average salary of men and women, calculated on an hourly basis, is effectively measured by the gender gap.  “Women held only 23 per cent of senior leadership positions in its workforce in Britain, despite accounting for more than half of total staff”, HSBC reported.    The bank informed that it was in the process of initiating a range of steps, in order to minimize the pay gap, that mainly includes devoting to ambitious target of the females holding around 30% of senior positions by the year 2020. A reported gap of 30% in the United Kingdoms, was declared by the Asia-focused Standard Chartered, during the past year, whereas, the only vital lender in U.K, operated by a female, that goes by the name Virgin Money, had informed that its women staff had an average earning of 32.5% less for every hour, as compared to the men workforce.  Royal Bank of Scotland & Lloyd's Banking Group declared the pay gaps concerning genders, to be roughly around 37% and 32.8% respectively. Barclays declared that it had paid the female force on an average of 48% of what men earned in fixed pay, in its international division, which houses its investment bank. Lawmakers have severely criticized the pay gaps, and most likely they will be questioning the investors, in the forthcoming shareholder’s meeting season, with future earnings potential and stock prices firmly connected to the efforts of bank, in order to revitalize their standings, due to the global financial crisis aftermath.  UK Gender Pay Gap  Nowadays, the gender pay gap in the UK is one of the largest in the whole Europe region. Women earn 21.1% less than men, based on average deviation between earnings, specifically called as ‘gross hourly earnings’ .  The headline masks some less positive developments in recent years, even if the pay gap between men and women has fallen quite dramatically over the past 30 years.  UK is accustomed to every women generation, who are progressing as compared to those in the past. But there has been a somewhat deceleration in this process, with the present generation performing only a bit better than their predecessors. This gap deviates as per the type of work, hourly rates for men were £12.97 for full-timers, £7.71 for part-timers, in the month of April, 2009, whereas for females, £7.86 for part-timers and £11.39 for full-timers.  Between public sector and private sector, this gap is significantly changing. The public sector had a pay gap of  13.8 %, whereas the private sector had a pay gap of 21.7% in the year 2008, as reported by The Times. Contradictory, full-times 16-17 years-old females earned 12.6% more than males, on the other hand, part-times females earned 1.3% less than males, as was pointed out by National Statistics Office in the year 2009.  Thus, we can say that, real contradictions existing in the English system of payment, are underlined by the surveys. The main aim of this paper, is firstly to assess the likely origins and causes of this disproportion by evaluating the sociology-cultural & political values of the U.K, concerning the pay gap, and second of all, display the steps that need to be taken in order to combat it.    The first portion treats of how social roots act on today's women life, perception of women's work, the stereotyping of women's careers and the major discrimination facing females. The 2nd part, we discuss regarding the previous government strategies and their corresponding actions, the European precautions to combat the pay gap, then finally the state of mind of UK and the actual actions. Factors that describe the gender pay gap  There are numerous factors describing gender pay gap, out of which the most crucial ones are economic, cultural and historical.  Economic Factors The economic factors are very crucial. Since women are much prone to halting their career progression during their children upbringing period, and employers usually avoid those workers who possess higher job quit rates, therefore, women as compared to the males may be not be able to enjoy having high paid stable jobs.  Cultural Factors Cultural factors, are strongly linked to the historical happenings. The expansion of advanced family models, has been accompanied by substantial changes in social norms, values and gender relations all over the world, during the past decade. In many of the present day societies, females having greater human capital returns and having less number of kids, increase their attachment to the market and subsequently increase their investments.  Historical Factors Speaking of historical factors of the gap, we need to disclose that women became "secondary workers" in the labor market ,soon after industrialization began. Women had entered in smaller numbers and for shorter duration as compared to males, into the labor market. Furthermore, industries and occupations used to be greatly separated by gender, to some extent to the reason that since employers formulated such policies which made the workplace segregated and prohibited the females from continuing their employment.  As a result, the income structure deviates with the passage of time, but historical happenings of adequately designed job systems, and adequately defined organization’s systems, has ultimately formulated a somewhat steady occupation segmentation.