Women, Class and Gender: new discriminations

Kathleen LynchEquality Studies Centre

UCD School of Social Justice22nd Greaves School

10th -12th September 2010

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Economic and social status of women and men in Ireland

• Education: In Ireland 14.2% of men aged 18 to 24 and 8.7% of women left school early in 2008; 57% of all 3rd level graduates are women…this looks very promising

• Employment and having Children• In 2008, the employment rate for women aged 20-44 was 66.1%. This rate

varied from 87.4% for women with no children to 56.9% for women whose youngest child was aged between 0 and 3 years of age (Table 1.7, CSO 2009)

• Income• The average income for Irish men aged 15-84 in 2006 was €32,338 and for

women it was €21,802 or 67.4 % of what men earned

• Average income of women aged 55-65 is only 53% of men’s income

• Source: CSO Women and Men in Ireland, (2009);

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Women in Ireland: Ownership and control of resources

• Control of resources: 86% of employers are men: only 3% of managing directors and 21% of senior managers are women

• Control of the Means of State Violence: Police and the Army combined are approximately 90% male

• Control of Land: 94% of farm holders are men • Lack of security: Almost 80% of part-time workers -

those working 19 hours per week or less are women. Almost 33% of all women employed are part-time compared with 8% of men

• Unpaid Labour: Less than 1% of persons whose main activity was working managing/caring the home/family were men; 99% were women

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Ireland: Pension coverage of persons in employment, 2005 and 2008

% of Women and Men with Different Pensions 2005 2008

• Pension coverage Men Women Men Women

• Occupational pension 38.0 43.0 34.0 40.0• Personal pension 17.6 6.0 18.0 7.0• Both occupational & • personal pension 3.0 2.0 4.0 4.0• No pension 42.0 49.0 44.0 50.0• Total 100 100 100 100

Source: CSO QNHS36 (% are rounded so may not add up to 100)Table 3.3 CSO Women and Men in Ireland Report, 2009

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All types of Carers aged 16+ (almost 1.2 million)

(2001) European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP) • Type of Care Female Male Total Total

Pop. Carer

% % % %• Care of children only 34.0 14.0 24.0 85.0• Care of persons due to

Illness, age or disability 3.0 2.0 2.0 8.0• Care of Children +adults 3.0 0.0 2.0 7.0• No Care responsibility 60.0 84.0 72.0 N/A• Total 100.0 100.0 100.0

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Earned Income differences between women and men are much greater than recognised

• Focus on hourly earnings conceals true differences in income between women and men in Ireland

• Mean (average) annual earnings for men in 2007 were €40,269 • Mean (average) annual earnings for women in 2007 were €31,403

– Women earned 78% of what men earned on average in 2007

• In the Financial sector women earned only 55% of what men earned – men’s average salary was €73,920 compared with €40,884 for women –

(including bonuses for both)• Women only earned 66% of what men earned in the Electricity, Gas and

Water supply sector: – Men’s average earnings including bonuses were €74,578 while they

were €49,269 for women including bonuses

Source: CSO (2009) National Employment Survey, 2007. Dublin: Government publications office (Table 40)

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Proposal to give higher points to higher level Maths – a class and gender issue

• The Class Issue: Giving higher points to higher grades in HL maths will further exacerbate inequality– In 2002 in our study of Mathematics education (Lyons, Lynch, Close, et

al., Inside Classrooms: the teaching and learning of Mathematics in Social Context) we found that 7% of schools did not do HL maths at Junior Cert– all were disadvantaged. In a further 20% less than 20% did HL maths at Junior C – the majority were either disadvantaged or had high numbers of students who were. This means that the numbers doing them at LC are even lower in these schools

• Gender inequality would also be exacerbates as more boys do HL maths and more get As

– in 2010, 54.3% of those who did HL Maths at leaving certificate were boys and of these 16.1% got As compared with 12.2% of girls. At the B level, girls and boys are equal and more girls get Cs at higher level

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Attacks on the public service and the community sector are attacks on women

• 26,507 in Civil Service of whom 65% are women – however between 75% and 90% of the top 3 level positions are held by men

(PO, AS and Sec. Gen) • Source: Department of Finance (CSO), 2009 Women and Men in Ireland, 2008

Report Table 1.19– 85% of graduates in health and welfare and 80.7% of those in education are

women– 82.5% of graduates in engineering, manufacturing and construction are men – 95% of those employed in construction are men– 85% of those working in primary education are women; almost 80% of those in

health care are women;• Community sector workers are overwhelmingly women – working class

women• Women are disproportionately concentrated in lower paid sectors of the

economy –cleaning, catering, retailing, caring, clerical in public and private sectors

– 58% of all service workers are women

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How do we understand the subordinate status of women?

The impact of Conceptions of Citizenship• Liberal, Social democratic view prevails within the EU• Traditionally citizenship is equated with the public

sphere:– citizen is defined as an economic actor – citizen is defined as a socio-cultural actor– citizen is defined as a political actor

• The adult citizen is defined as an autonomous person (employed worker of a particular nationality)

• It largely ignores community & voluntary work, care work and love work generally work that is not for gain/profit)

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Problems with Liberal conceptions of Citizenship for

Women

• Ignores the reality of dependency and interdependency• Silence on the reality of human dependency and

interdependency leads to silence on the care and love work that most women and many men do without pay

• Need a new perspective on citizenship - Universal caregiver and care receiver - a person who has citizenship with or without paid employment

– based on a relational rather than autonomous view of the person

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Neo-liberal concept of the citizen prioritises the economic citizen

• The neo-liberal ‘citizen is seen as an employed worker and economic maximiser and consumer.‘a hypothetical man supposed to be free from altruistic

sentiments and motives interfering with a purely selfish pursuit of wealth and its enjoyment.’

• Moral endorsement of the CARE-LESS model of the citizen in neo- liberalism – ‘ideal worker is a Zero-Load worker’ – person with no care responsibilities

• Self-interested economic model is blind to the rationalities of caring which are not governed by purely economic self-centred calculation.

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HPAT and Gender• The Health Professional Aptitude Test for medicine• Secret test – Examining should be done in public• Evidence this year that repeating the test radically raised students scores –

this shows it is not a test of ability as it purports to be – practising improves your scores so it is a test of practice not ability or learning!!

• ACER has refused to release statistics on the test and improved scores!• Cost – it costs €95 to do the test and you have to buy the tests to practice at

€27.50 to include postage• There are only 5 Centres in Ireland where it is offered so students may have

to stay overnight – more money

• 110 multiple choice questions - girls tend not to do as well on MCTs as boys

• HPAT is directly discriminatory against women as section 3 is based on non-verbal spatial reasoning tests (essentially a mathematics test) where girls are known not to perform as well as boys for a host of different reasons

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Sample question from the HPAT

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Sample question from the HPAT

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Report of the US Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate

Admission, 2008• Seriously questions the use of standardized

tests as a basis for selecting for higher education entry on:– Social class grounds – costs involved/practice makes

perfect!– Racial/ethnic grounds/language grounds– Gender grounds as they are not as reliable for women

• Tests that are best predictors of overall college attainment (not just first year) are tests that “measure content covered in high school courses” (page 11)

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Report of the US Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate

Admission, 2008• Referring to the use of tests as a way of

measuring educational outcomes it says:• “The Commission recommends that states

refrain from using standardized admission tests without significant modification as evaluators of student achievement, …..Admission tests ….are not sufficiently tailored to measure progress toward explicit measures for learning in a given state.” (Page 10)

• Time for someone to take a discrimination case on gender equality grounds re. the HPAT

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Time for Resistance

• Culture of silence wrapped around Irish Women• Fear of being seen, of being defined as

awkward, assertive etc., controls us and keeps us silent

• Irish women need to come out of the closet and lay claim to a new concept of citizenship, one that grants them rights in the public sphere to employment but also recognises the cost of care work, personally and politically