International mechanisms to revalue women's work: research

4 Nov 2021 03:53 PM

The report reviews different approaches to redress the undervaluation of women’s work and assesses their applicability to the Scottish employment context.

The report finds that undervaluation of women’s work is a driver of the gender pay gap and makes recommendations to alleviate this disparity.

The report suggests that equal pay legislation is not being fully utilized in helping women achieve pay equality, and that privatization and the contracting out of public services limits access to formal means of restitution. The specific recommendations include:

• steps to increase the collective bargaining power of social care workers through unions
• use of ‘job evaluation’ to ensure equal pay for equal work
• greater regulation of contracted work to ensure a decent standard of pay and compliance with equal pay legislation
• strengthening of gender pay gap reporting
• increasing awareness through training and greater public representation for issues of pay equality
• strengthening equal pay legislation to make employers more accountable

International Mechanisms to Revalue Women's Work: Research Exploring and Evaluating International Mechanisms that Aim to Revalue or Result in the Revaluation of Women's Work 115 page PDF 1.4 MB