Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.06.2007, Qupperneq 5

08_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 09_007_INTERVIEW/EQUALITY
Lilja Mósesdóttir is a professor of econmomics
at Bifröst University. Her main area of study
has been economic gender differences. The
Grapevine sat down with Mósesdóttir on the
Women’s Day, June 19, to learn more about
gender inequalities.
Perhaps you could begin by telling us a
little bit about your research?
I am an economist and I received my univer-
sity education in the US and the UK. In my
research, I have mainly focused on the different
economic positions of men and women, not
just here in Iceland, but also within the EU.
During the past 10 years, I have worked as an
Icelandic expert for the European Commission
on issues such as employment, social cohesion
and gender equality. From 2003 to 2005, I was
the coordinator of EU funded research project
on gender equality in the knowledge based
society – the first Icelandic social scientist to
coordinate EU funded research project.
In the project, I headed a group of experts
from eight institutions in seven countries and
one of the main conclusions of our research,
and the one that surprised us the most, was
that the progress towards a knowledge based
society was much more rapid than the progress
towards gender equality. We measured this
through two indices consisting of different
indicators that should capture the development
of the knowledge based society and of gender
equality as defined by the EU. The index on
knowledge based society involved indicators
on educational attainment, spread and use of
ICTs and on the share of high-tech and medium
high-tech industries. The gender equality index
consisted of indictors on the gender gaps in
educational attainment, spread and use of ICTs,
employment and in pay as well as on gender
segregation in the labour market. Through
these indices, we measured the changes from
1997 – 2002 across the 15 EU member states,
Iceland and Hungary. The conclusion was that
the progress towards gender equality was less
intense and general than the development
towards a knowledge based society.
So the move towards a knowledge based
society does little or nothing to improve
gender inequality?
Yes, and then the question becomes why?
When we move towards a knowledge based
society, the progress is both positive and nega-
tive, so it levels out and there is little or no
sign of change. Women’s employment has
increased a lot in Iceland and in Europe, but at
the same time that means women have been
entering low-wage jobs, and the gender pay
gap increases. When women first began to
enter the labour market in the ‘60s, they were
often well educated, while women who have
entered the labour market in recent decades
are not, and they take unskilled low-wage jobs.
So when the number of low skilled women
increases in the labour market, the gender
pay gap increases.
As women’s average salary goes down?
Exactly, the average goes down. The gender
pay gap in the other four Nordic Countries was
around 17% in 2004 while it was only 7% in
Italy where the share of low skilled women in
the labour market was lower.
This comes somewhat as a surprise. Most
people like to think of the Nordic Coun-
tries as more egalitarian than Southern
Europe.
Well, that may very well be in most other as-
pects apart from the gender pay gap. Women’s
labour force participation is much higher in the
Nordic Countries; there are on average more
women in Parliament in the Nordic Countries.
The gender pay gap has been the main gender
problem in the Nordic countries, and recently
there is evidence of a widening gender pay
gap among the highly educated. As Nordic
women have become more educated, they
have been moving in great numbers into high-
level jobs such as managers and legislators.
The gender pay gap is largest for such high-
level occupations since these tend to have the
widest earnings distribution and women are
concentrated in lower paying jobs. So when
the women move to management jobs, the
gender pay gap increases.
But the situation in Icelandic universities
today is such that women are an over-
whelming majority of students.
That is why these conclusions surprised us so
much. Young women in Europe are on aver-
age better educated than young men: that
has given rise to claims that women will be
the winners of the knowledge-based society.
That is true for some areas of the knowledge-
based society, but not all areas.
Do you believe the situation will correct
itself, or is this a remnant of an old male
society that keeps the status quo?
There are certain conceptions of women’s
motivations for engaging in paid work. Such
as that they are working to make extra money
for the household and therefore they don’t
need as high wages as men who are main
breadwinners. A new study made by a group
of researchers at Reykjavík University made
public today [June 19], shows that a man
and a woman, with identical educational and
professional background, were offered dif-
ferent wages by a group of female and male
professionals and students participating in the
research. The woman was on average expected
to accept 13-19% lower wage than the man.
This study confirms claims made by different
women who have experienced that they are
being offered lower wages than men with
comparable background.
So men, in general, have at least a 13%
advantage when negotiating salaries?
According to this study, yes. I also remember
a recent study from Norway that examined
how people rated speeches by politicians.
Men invariably rated male-politicians higher,
whereas there was no marked difference how
women rated male and female politicians. This
suggests that men tend to look at the world
from the viewpoint of gender while women
are more gender neutral.
How does Iceland compare to other coun-
tries in your research?
We are both the best and worst when it comes
to gender equality. Iceland has the highest
female employment rate in Europe while the
gender pay gap is the widest. In 2004, it was
28%, while it was about 15% on average in
25 EU member states. The reason is, among
other things, that women’s labour force par-
ticipation is high in Iceland, but a large portion
of working women in Iceland are working in
low-wage jobs, which drags down the aver-
age wage of women. Moreover, the gender
pay gap is widest in occupations that are very
gender segregated such as that of craft workers
and technicians. This indicates a widespread
undervaluation of female as compared with
male dominated jobs.
So, how do we correct the situation?
In my opinion, the reasons why we are not
progressing towards gender equality as we
move towards a knowledge-based society are
the employment changes associated with the
transition and the measures implemented to
tackle gender inequalities. The employment
changes are the expansion of the service sec-
tor and the growth of skilled jobs that have
created employment opportunities for women
and enabled many educated women to enter
high level jobs. This has not translated into
more equal division of unpaid work across
Europe.
In addition, when women acquire more
education, they move into the jobs with the
widest wage distribution so that the gender
pay gap widens. In that sense, the market
creates opposing tendencies regarding gender
inequalities. Unfortunately, the measures that
have been implemented to tackle gender in-
equalities have so far been unsuccessful in this
area. These measures are, on the one hand,
especially focused on women’s disadvantages
and, on the other hand, gender mainstreaming
involving the integration of the gender perspec-
tive into all policy-making. The main emphasis
is still on special measurements, although their
foucus is too narrow to capture all the different
aspects of gender inequalities. The problem
with gender mainstreaming is that it has been
implemented as a tool to improve traditional
ways of making policies in Europe and not as
an instrument to challenge market forces and
power relations underlying gender inequalities.
As a result, we are always circling around the
gender problems and not tackling their roots
like male-dominated power structures.
Take for example, the glass ceiling that pre-
vents highly skilled women from entering high
paying managerial jobs. So far, few measures
have been implemented to breakdown the
power structures behind the glass ceiling. The
EU’s proposals and member states measures
have been weak when it comes to eliminating
the gender pay gap. The main emphasis has
been on how to measure the gender pay gap
and not on active measures to reduce it. Ac-
cording to EU, a gender pay gap is justified if it
can be attributed to productivity difference.
How is the difference in productivity ex-
plained then?
It is difficult to measure productivity, especially
in knowledge based jobs, because their output
is often in the form of service or knowledge
that is often impossible to put into quantita-
tive terms. I have never come across a study
showing that jobs performed by women are
on average less productive than that of men.
However, I often heard employers use produc-
tivity differences to justify higher wages of jobs
carried out by men as opposed to women.
Young women are more educated than young
men, so they should be more productive if they
are using their skills at work. In recent years,
the problem of skill mismatches has become
more widespread across labour markets in
Europe. Women especially do not seem to have
the technical skills required for jobs associated
with the knowledge based society. However,
skill mismatches may arise from the fact that
women’s skills are defined as wrong rather than
that their education being wrong.
What do you mean by their education
being wrong?
Women tend to choose social sciences and
business education to a greater extent than
men who tend to choose engineering to a
greater extent than women. In the Icelandic
banking industry, the trend has been to hire
engineers rather then people with business
education. Why is that? Is it because engineers
have a better knowledge of business? Or is it
because the engineers are men? These are
questions that have been left unanswered.
From what you have said, it seems to me
that a gender quota is a solution that
needs to be seriously considered.
When I was young I didn’t even want to hear
the words ‘gender quota’. I am now of the
opinion that the progress towards gender
equality has been way too slow and radical
measures have to be implemented to put us on
the fast track. I sense that women in Iceland are
increasingly losing their patience with the slow
progress and the pressure is mounting on the
government to undertake much more radical
measures to achieve gender equality. Jóhanna
Sigurðardóttir [the Minister for Social Affairs]
said in interview today [June 19] that she was
ready to consider whether to enforce by law
of gender quota on the share of women on
company boards, as it decreased recently. For
20 years women have been told that we were
not educated enough. Recently, we have been
told that we don’t have the right education.
Now, there are a lot of well-educated women,
but then education does not matter as much
as work experience. Women no longer accept
to be blamed for the lack of progress towards
gender equality.
The Paradox of Gender Pay Gap
Text by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson Photo by Leó Stefánsson
The EU’s proposals and
member states measures
have been weak when it
comes to eliminating the
gender pay gap.
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