Lesley Riddoch: Gender blinkers are stifling Scotland

Has anyone gender-proofed the Scottish Government’s capital spending plans? Alex Neil’s ambitious programme for £60 billion worth of road, hospital and school construction has been subject to much scrutiny and not a little mockery.

“Wish list” and “A letter to Santa” were some of the kinder headlines. But since the SNP’s approval ratings currently top all the other parties put together, this “wish list” may at least guide Scottish Government spending for a decade to come.

In which case there is a very big problem. The capital spending plan of the Cabinet secretary for infrastructure and capital investment is effectively job creation for the boys because in Scotland, the construction industry is overwhelmingly populated by men.

Of course some will say: ‘So what?’ Unless women want to break their carefully manicured fingernails carrying bricks, mixing mortar and laying hot tar, infrastructure investment will always be men’s work.

It just ain’t so. Some women do want manual, outdoors jobs just as some men want to care for children in nurseries. In any case, brawn is less important than brains in many construction-related tasks these days, but indoor engineering jobs are still dominated by men.

Why does the virtual exclusion of women from Scotland’s future capital investment plans not prompt an outcry? It may seem petty to split hairs over jobs that might not even be created. But if plans for £60bn worth of jobs excluded large social groups like men, Scots or MSPs, I think we’d hear all about it.

Maybe the £60bn budget is too big for punters to comprehend. Maybe the negative impact of more roads on Scotland’s carbon emissions target seems more urgent. Maybe uncertainty about financing the dream has caused a suspension of belief… and judgment. Or maybe no-one in authority in Scotland really cares if women are squeezed out of the labour market.

A spokesman for the Scottish Government confirmed they hadn’t gender-proofed these spending plans – though they do equality-proof the budget.

It’s good that ministers consider the impact of annual revenue spending on all sections of the population. But the appointment of a new minister for youth unemployment shows how much further government can go when it wants to make sure a part of the population doesn’t get left behind.

How then can it be right to apply no particular thought to the profile of winners and losers over decades of capital spending? Have we returned to the post-war era where Land Girls and working women must down tools obediently, go back home and leave the world of paid employment to men – reeling now from retrenchment as they once returned reeling from war?

Perhaps the hope/plan is that women will get the bulk of the new service jobs created by the male construction effort. That’s hopeful indeed.

More men than women use cars and motorways for work and leisure. Falling school rolls mean new schools will probably mean better conditions for existing workers, not new teaching jobs. The government’s laudable plan to switch funding from hospitals to the community likewise implies no big net rise in nursing jobs.

Some new jobs and better conditions for female workers are not to be sniffed at. Men will get so much more. Achieving gender fairness doesn’t mean switching half the cash to other budgets. The government could redefine “capital” to include human capital and adopt policies to expand the state’s caring role. But that only compounds gender apartheid.

Why are men still largely absent from caring jobs and women largely absent from engineering after decades of warm words and some excellent voluntary schemes? Do totally different “natural aptitudes” explain our rigid labour market – or do training and apprenticeship schemes simply reinforce social prejudice?

Work published in 2009 by Scottish academics Jim Campbell, Morag Gillespie, Ailsa McKay and Anne Meikle suggests occupational segregation in the Modern Apprenticeship scheme (MA) “effectively limits the productive capacity of the Scottish economy [and] is a major contributory factor to the gender pay gap.”

Scottish Enterprise figures show that just 22 per cent of those undertaking MAs in 2008 were female – down from a share of 34 per cent in 2004. That “female high” followed the introduction of the Adult MA in 2002 – which allowed women who missed the boat at school to retrain. Now MA cash is to be concentrated on school leavers so the female share of the apprenticeship budget looks set to dwindle still further.

The “male bread-winner/female care-giver” thwarts personal development, social fairness and hammers economic efficiency. According to the EOC (2005), the biggest skills shortages exist in the most (gender) polarised professions – construction (0.9 per cent female Scottish MAs in 2008); engineering (1.9 per cent); plumbing (0.8 per cent); ICT (no separate category); and childcare (97.8 per cent).

That marginalisation of women is actually getting worse. In 1999, 41.9 per cent of all male apprentices were in plumbing, construction or engineering MAs – by 2008 the figure was 53 per cent. The funnelling of men and women into segregated sectors also allows women’s work to become progressively underpaid and undervalued.

A 2007 report found that completion of an MA raises the average wage in construction by 32 per cent, whereas in (largely female) retail there is no wage impact at all. This contributed to a 21 per cent pay gap between male and female apprentices in 2008 – the same as the pay gap in the wider economy.

In other words, apprenticeships not only mirror gender inequalities in the marketplace but actively reinforce them. According to the academics, this produces “labour market rigidity”. In plain English, gender blinkers are stifling Scotland.

Women have been hit hardest by job cuts and service reductions. And yet research shows more of a woman’s wage is spent immediately on the rest of the family, especially on children – precisely what we need to kick-start the economy.

Alex Neil’s big capital spending plan is at best gender-blind and at worst regressive for women – it could be revolutionary.

Gender quotas attached to apprenticeships and the contracts awarded to big engineering companies could transform our working world – just as rules attached to lottery grants transformed equal access to sporting venues. Equality-proofing the proposed capital spend would also help.

Scots may not be rampant feminists, but parents want governments to remove every barrier that inhibits the life chances of their children – not just the Border with England.