The UK government is closing down schools to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Do you know it will widen the gender pay gap?
UK government close down schools across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on Friday because of the coronavirus.
The gender pay gap is the gap between what men and women are paid. It frequently happened when the woman give a birth, however, due to the coronavirus, suspend of the class is widen this gap.
Catherine Walsh, a teacher from Cardiff university said: “It is unfair, women are more likely to have more caring responsibilities. If the government decided to close schools because of coronavirus, there is no doubt that women should go back to home and take care of the child.”
She also expressed her concern for the future that Gender pay gap affects women all the way through their lives. Women get paid less, and it also means that they get to save less pension for the retirement.
New analysis published by the TUC today reveals that the UK still has one of the worst gender pay gaps in Europe. Right now, the gender pay gap for all employees in the UK stands at 17.9% which means women work for free for the first 65 days of the year.
“It is true that if school shuts, some people might be able to find other arrangements for someone to look after their children. But lots of parents have to take time off themselves,”said Christopher, a Cardiff councillor.
He added:” If people don’t get paid or they only get paid sick pay that’s lower than their wage, again, women could be hit. I think that will be temporary. I think if they were to any school closures we’ve seen in Italy, in Ireland, they talk to there are school closures, but they talk about for a period of weeks. So that will disappear.
The bigger thing for gender pay gap is that structural ongoing thing where women do tend to either reduce their hours or take career breaks to look after children. And that affects their earnings over their whole lifetime.