Guest post: “Gender stereotypes hold us all back”

[MumsnetGuestPosts]

It’s that time of year again when large employers are reporting their gender pay gaps. This year we (unsurprisingly) find that 45% are reporting bigger gaps than they did last year. So what is going on? Undoubtedly, the fact that employers are not required to have an action plan in place is one of the issues. We have to focus on the action required and hold employers to account for that, rather than just requiring them to report the gap. But we also have to get behind the numbers and the regulation to address the underlying causes, and the elephant in the room is gender stereotyping. By that I mean the social norms and expectations that limit what women and men or boys and girls should do.

Take who does the caring, for example. We build our parental leave system around a 1950s model of family life. Yes, we have shared parental leave, but it is structured in a way that means fewer than 1 in 10 dads take it up because it is paid at too low a rate. It starts from the assumption that it’s the mother’s leave to give to him and not a dedicated entitlement for fathers. Pregnancy discrimination drives 54,000 working mothers out of their jobs each year. Many mothers find themselves trapped in low paid part-time work. Working mothers experience a 30% pay gap by the time their first child is 20. All of this is underpinned by the expectation that mothers should be at home caring for children and not in the workplace, and that fathers should work to provide for the family. You may think we have left all this behind, but Fawcett research suggests that we haven’t.

Another cause of the gender pay gap is occupational segregation. This is where we see men concentrated in some sectors or roles and women in others. Take childcare and teaching, for example: both are grossly underpaid and undervalued (because women do them) - just 2% of pre-school teachers are men. Take as another example engineering, where just 7% of apprentices are women; or physics where just 20% of A levels are taken by girls. This is after decades of trying to ‘encourage’ and ‘inspire’ young women into STEM subjects. Girls’ attainment at GCSE is equal to or better than boys, but at each subsequent stage girls fall away. By the time they graduate or complete their apprenticeships, there are just a handful left. So why isn’t it working?

The answer to all of this is the way society is straight-jacketing our children into harmful gender norms and stereotypes. Often, as parents, we do it unwittingly. Sometimes we are simply so bombarded by the ‘pinkification’ of life, as campaigners like Let Toys be Toys have so powerfully demonstrated. Sometimes we give in and think ‘What harm can it do really?’ (I have four children, so I understand how hard this is). But, as our research shows, the truth is that pushing children to conform to gender norms is indeed harmful. It’s gender norms which make us reward men who ask for a pay rise but regard women who do the same as ‘pushy’, or which treat women in leadership roles as ‘imposters’. It’s gender norms which create the expectation of visual perfection for girls and which contribute to one in five 14-year-olds self-harming. It’s gender norms which limit boys to be one version of masculine, and which reinforce and normalise aggression in boys from a young age.

It is tempting to feel helpless in the face of such an enormous problem. But evidence suggests that all is not lost. Research shows the wiring in our brains is soft, not hard. Professor Gina Rippon argues we can mould our ‘plastic brains’, even as adults. The truth is, though, that we have a better chance of change if we intervene early on. This is why Fawcett is launching an exciting new Commission on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood and we would love Mumsnet to be involved. We have to get to the underlying causes and make some fundamental changes to our education system, our parenting, and the commercial world too. Gender stereotypes hold us all back, but if we can change them, we can change the future.

You can read more about Fawcett’s Commission on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood here.

Sam Smethers will be returning to this post on the 1st of May to answer some questions

[SamSmethers]

@AssassinatedBeauty

I'd be intrigued to know what the Fawcett society would suggest to address/challenge people who hold a very deeply held belief that women and men are fundamentally different in terms of psychology/abilities/brains.

How do you challenge the idea that women should simply accept being penalized for bearing children, and accept this as an unarguable natural state?

AssasinatedBeauty, that really gets into how gender stereotypes built on sex harm women. Yes, women bear children – but why should men not take an equal role in raising them? We campaign on improving paid paternity leave for that reason. We want a longer, better paid period of leave dedicated to dads in the first year of a child’s life.

On one of your other posts about challenging the nature/nurture debate, definitely have a look at the Gina Rippon link above.

[SamSmethers]

@Carriemac

how are we supposed to take anything the Fawcett society says seriously whenit feels that trans women are women and should be allowed to access single sex services? Humans cannot change sex.

In response to Carriemac and a number of other posters, when it comes to single sex spaces we support the protections in the Equality Act and want them to be retained. Those provide for exceptions which mean that service providers can restrict trans people’s access to single-sex spaces both in the provision of services and in terms of employment, where doing so is a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.” That’s not a catch-all exception from the inclusion of trans women, but rather a provision that enables providers and employers to strike a balance between interests where one is needed.

When I gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee on this question a few months ago I argued that there needed to be clearer guidance available to service providers as there is considerable confusion about the Equality Act exemptions at the moment. I also said that the voices of service users should be heard in this discussion.

[SamSmethers]

@grasspigeons

Gender stereotyping in early childhood is something that i have 'battled' against with my sons and had some success. However, society is incredibly uncomfortable with boys who want to do sterotypically girlish things and my sons are aware of and limited by that. I am genuinley afraid that i have done my autistic child in particular a disservice by encouraging him to not worry about gender stereotypes due to the gingerbread presentation shown at schools suggesting that your brain might be a girls brain in a boys body if you like certain things. How can initiatives to limit gender sterotyping in early childhood work alongside positive affirmation and puberty blockers for those who already chose non sterotypical activities.

GrassPigeons, I obviously don’t need to tell you this as you’re already out there challenging gender stereotypes, but not all boys who want to wear dresses, or girls who are a “tomboy”, are trans, lesbian, bi or gay. We need to be much more comfortable as a society in encouraging children not to conform to gender stereotypes, and in not putting them into boxes when they do. Not conforming with gender stereotypes is not the same as being trans, and that’s important to say.

[SamSmethers]

@ThomasRichard

Wasn’t it at a Fawcett society meeting in Parliament where it was stated that a House of Commons composed of 50% men and 50% transwomen would be job done for women’s equality? I’m not sure how you can fight gender stereotypes when you think men who say they ‘feel’ like women are actual women

ThomasRichard, - there was a comment made by someone else on a platform at a Fawcett event but they were not representing Fawcett. You ask whether we would be happy with 50% men and 50% trans women in Parliament – in short, no. Women of colour, disabled women, lesbians and bisexual women are all additionally under represented within politics. What we need is for women in all their diversity, including women who are trans, to be fairly represented in our political system. Our focus should not be on how to redistribute the smaller number of opportunities available between women, but on tackling the underlying problem and growing the number of opportunities by ending the predominance of men in positions of power and ensuring truly gender balanced and diverse political representation.

[BuzzShitbagBobbly]

You ask whether we would be happy with 50% men and 50% trans women in Parliament – in short, no. Women of colour, disabled women, lesbians and bisexual women are all additionally under represented within politics.

OH NO YOU DI'INT!!!

You did not just equate tw with WOC, disabled women, lesbians and bisexual women, surely?!

Why is that so hard to understand? I drew you a helpful diagram to explain.

[SamSmethers]

@NewAccount270219

Yes, we have shared parental leave, but it is structured in a way that means fewer than 1 in 10 dads take it up because it is paid at too low a rate

I strongly object to this. I'm going to copy and paste from a thread I started the other day when the TUC said something similar:

SPL is paid at the same rate as statutory maternity pay! My DH is currently on SPL since I went back to work. If I was on leave right now I'd be being paid exactly what DH is - but it's too low for him but good enough for me?

Look, I get that in many families (not ours, but many) the man is the higher earner and that's a barrier to him taking leave. But basically this seems to suggest that women's wages are optional - 'pin money' - and so it's fine to throw them some token mat pay, but men need real money. And I find that sexist and offensive.

I understand your concern. This isn't about giving men more. The system at the moment gives her 6 weeks at 90% of her pay and then her period of statutory maternity pay. For him to take any leave beyond his 2 weeks paternity leave, she, legally, has to give it to him from her allowance.

All the international evidence shows that for men to take leave, which has an impact in terms of equalising caring work later on, it needs to be better paid and to be reserved for him - a 'use it or lose it' system.

So we are calling for 6 weeks decently paid, like mothers get, and then up to 3m at the same rate as maternity pay. That would be a good start.

Of course, in the UK Maternity Pay is woefully low, far lower than almost all OECD countries. We campaign with Maternity Action and the TUC for that to change. Better parental pay for both mothers and fathers is needed to get more equal sharing of care.

[SamSmethers]

@TemporaryPermanent

Any facts I can identify in Nyushka's posts appear to be incorrect, alongside the nonfactual emotional outpouring. I'm not an expert. Would the Fawcett society like to comment on these lengthy posts?

TemporaryPermanent, in response to whether Fawcett would like to comment on Nyushka’s posts: where do we start? Here are a few thoughts:

Women leaving university are not earning more than their male counterparts. The mean gender pay gap for 18-21s is 5%, and for 22-29 year olds it’s 7.1%. It really widens after women have children, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown, but the impact of discrimination and other factors is still there early on.

On the question of choice - all of the choices we make in our lives are constrained to some degree, but the choice to go to part-time work for women is really constrained by society’s expectation that women will be the primary carer for children. We need to shift expectations and the structure of parental leave policy so that fathers play a more equal role. But equally, working part-time shouldn’t prevent career progression but it does. That’s because only 11% of decently-paid jobs are advertised on a part-time or flexible basis. There are very few senior part-time roles. So women repeatedly work below their potential and stay there.

Quotas - We advocate the time limited use of quotas (all women shortlists) in politics, where it’s vital to get more women in to those senior decision-making roles, and we think they should be looked at for boards for large publicly limited companies. No one is calling for quotas beyond that. We have to decide, do we want to speed up change or just wait for decades for change to happen. Discrimination and bias are barriers to progress. Sometimes you need something to help you leap over those barriers.

“There has been no multivaried camparison done on pay gap. Who would take a study seriously without looking at all the factors?”

Multivaried comparison on pay gap data. The ONS did one which was quite good, but as it used PAYE data it doesn’t have some important factors: www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/understandingthegenderpaygapintheuk/2018-01-17

Wendy Olsen’s work with the UK Household Longitudinal Survey is fantastic on this openaccess.city.ac.uk/19821/1/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_UK_evidence_from_the_UKHLS.pdf

And we would also suggest a look at the EHRC’s work on the drivers too www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/research-report-109-the-gender-pay-gap.pdf

“One could argue that many professions should be paid more, however the society model we live in is capitalist so people or rather the Labour they produce is paid based on the value it is worth and we (generally) are not dictated to what we must pay for someone if we don't feel they are worth that much…

You can disagree by all means if you don't believe women choose to go into more caring roles but the evidence would suggest otherwise. That's why women dominate in jobs such as primary school teachers, nurses, secretaries and care workers by as much as 95%.”

As KIngHenrysCodpiece commented, why don’t we pay people who work in caring professions more? Contrary to what Nyushka says, but inherent in the careers she flags as women-dominated, it’s usually the state that controls or at least influences what those workers are paid. So yes, we should absolutely be asking why those roles, given how vital they are, are often undervalued, undertrained, and over-worked. We want to see the minimum wage paid at the real living wage rate. Over 60% of the beneficiaries would be women.

Nyushka, we should also look at the lessons that history teaches us. Women campaigning for the vote were told that women were not naturally suited to participate in the electoral process. They were too delicate. One hundred years ago, when the Disqualification of women (Removal) Act was passed that first gave women legal permission to enter careers in the law, medicine, and accounting, a lot of people would have said some of the same things you’re saying – that women are just naturally not suited to being, for example, a solicitor. Now, women make up half of new lawyers. Things have, changed since the Victorian era. They will keep changing.

The reason we are campaigning on stereotypes in early childhood is because we want to speed up change by challenging and changing the attitudes which hold back progress.

Women are different, but difference should not mean disadvantage.

[SamSmethers]

Signing off now! Please do check out the work of our Commission, and respond to our call for evidence

www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/the-commission-on-gender-stereotypes-in-early-childhood

We want to hear from you.

[JustineMumsnet]

Thanks to all for all the considered questions and of course thanks to Sam for your time and considered answers.

Fawcett have asked Mumsnet whether we would like to be a part of this commission, and given Mumsnet users' longstanding strength of feeling on issues such as gender-prescriptive toys (the Let Toys Be Toys campaign sprang out of conversations on Mumsnet) and clothing for young girls that plays on stereotypes of adult sexuality (Let Girls Be Girls), we agreed that we would be keen to take part. As ever with things like this we will be seeking MNers' views throughout the Commission process and will be representing MN users' thoughts to the panel - so please keep an eye out for us asking you for input as we go along.

[EmpressLesbianInChair]

I don't agree with many of Sam's answers, but I would like to thank her for coming back and at least answering the difficult questions.