Deregulation and Women's Employment: The Diverse Experiences of Women in Britain

In recent years employers in Britain have taken up equal opportunity policies more widely and structural changes in the economy have generally favored women. Against this, the pursuit of labor market deregulation is generally thought to impact adversely on women. This paper considers the changing British policy framework of the last ten to fifteen years and the effects on women's employment, highlighting differences amongst women. Deregulation and flexibilization are argued to have affected the conditions of part-time employment for women rather than its scale and pattern of expansion. The changing gender wage gap in Britain and the growth of pay inequalities amongst women are analyzed using a shift-share approach. The limited convergence in earnings between men and women is largely confined to full-time workers and has two distinct aspects. Full-time female employees have made some inroads into higher-paid occupations, but at the bottom end of the market the narrowing of the gender wage gap reflects little more than the deterioration in the position of low-paid men, relative to the median. The British case shows the limitations of an equal opportunities agenda pursued within a wider regime of burgeoning labor market inequalities.