{"id":582,"date":"2020-06-09T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/?p=582"},"modified":"2020-12-18T12:15:11","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T11:15:11","slug":"jun2020eng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/jun2020eng\/","title":{"rendered":"Jun 2020 &#8211; Could the Covid-19 lockdown cause pressure on mothers and affect the UK\u2019s gender pay gap?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The reported gender pay gap for 2019 in the UK\nstands at 17.3%, however according to a <a href=\"about:blank\">report<\/a>\nconducted by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), there could now be a slower\nprogress in narrowing the gender pay gap, as a result of the coronavirus\npandemic and the long lasting effect it will have on working mothers and their\nprofessional lives after the lockdown is lifted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is well known that, prior to the coronavirus\npandemic, women were less likely than men to be in paid work; even among\nworkers in similar roles, there has been evidence of a persistent gender gap in\nhourly wages, with women being paid less, particularly after workers become\nparents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IFS report which was conducted in April-early May\nfinds that mothers are more likely than fathers in the household, to be\ninterrupted during the working day, whilst in lockdown and spend less time on\nwork but rather household chores and childcare. Some\ninteresting finds were that:<br>\n<br>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Mothers in households with two opposite-gender\nparents were only doing a third of the uninterrupted paid work hours of\nfathers, compared with 60% of these uninterrupted hours before the virus took\nhold.<br>\n<br>\n<\/li><li>Almost half (47%) of mothers\u2019 paid working hours\nare split between work and other activities such as childcare and household\ntasks, compared with 30% of fathers\u2019 paid working hours.<br>\n<br>\n<\/li><li>Although fathers are spending almost twice as many\nweekday hours on childcare than in 2014-15, mothers are looking after their\nchildren for 2.3 hours more hours than fathers, for 10.3 hours per day on\naverage.<br>\n<br>\n<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Several of the report\u2019s findings suggest that there\nis a risk of reversing some of the progress made in narrowing the gender wage\ngap over recent decades. In line with other labour market surveys collected\nsince the start of the covid-19 crisis and based on the current IFS findings,\nwomen may be taking a greater share of childcare responsibilities and are more\nlikely to have stopped doing paid work since lockdown began. In addition, even\nif they are doing some paid work, women are now doing fewer hours than men and\nare more likely to be juggling paid work and childcare at the same time.<br>\n<br>\n<br>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On average, mothers are more likely to step back\nfrom paid work during the covid-19 crisis (either voluntarily or through\ntemporary or permanent job loss) and are more likely to pick up more of the\ndomestic responsibilities, and as a result could face a long-run hit to their\nearnings prospects. For example, past research shows that the time women take\noff when having a child, and the reduction in hours once they return to work,\nhave long-term effects, reducing their future hourly wages. The differences\nfound in how the work hours of fathers and mothers are being affected by this\ncrisis will result in larger detrimental effects on the career progression and\nearnings prospects of mothers than of fathers.<br>\n<br>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The covid-19 crisis has brought an unprecedented\ndisruption to working patterns across the board, we have seen changes in who is\ndoing paid work, where, when and how work is carried out, however it is evident\nthat there is immense pressure on parent\u2019s time and paid work. It will be\ninteresting to see whether attitudes towards gender and work will have changed\nas a result of the lockdown and in turn, prompt lasting changes in families and\nworkplaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For more information, please contact Yoko Nakada on\n<a href=\"about:blank\">yoko.nakada@lewissilkin.com<\/a> or\nKoichiro Nakada on <a href=\"about:blank\">koichiro.nakada@lewissilkin.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The reported gender pay gap for 2019 in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[110,171,164,165,166,167,168,169,51,170],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}