The persistence of gendered pay inequality some 30 years after its formal prohibition raises questions over the mechanisms sustaining it. Recent contributions highlight the role of low skills visibility and valuation in maintaining pay inequality in predominantly female occupations. We examine the skills and rewards of early years’ workers and the organisational processes that define them. We do so at an important juncture when the importance and regulation of the ‘early years’’ sector has increased significantly; and following extensive organisational restructuring aimed at delivering pay equality. We conclude that whilst the application of more systematic forms of skill measurement have improved the relative rewards of nursery nurses, highly gendered constructions of their skills, particularly those most closely linked to mothering, continue to impact negatively on their valuation. The presence of caring activities appears to eclipse their role in education. Complex institutional and organisational factors maintain important aspects of gender inequality.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of Glasgow in its series Working Papers with number
2007_43.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: