The law of unintended consequences

Another of the issues swirling around those controversial public sector cuts is the suggestion that women are being unfairly targeted, an implication which surfaced in some of the coverage surrounding International Women’s Day
Without passing judgement in any way on either gender politics or financial policy, I can say with some certainty that this isn’t true.
How come? It is probably true that more women than men will lose their jobs as a result of public sector cutbacks. But this is because there are more of them in the public sector – particularly in teaching, the NHS and those roles which are part-time or negotiated job share.
So while it is accurate to say that more women are likely to lose jobs as a result of public sector cutbacks than men, it is NOT accurate to say women are more likely to lose their jobs than men. There is a huge difference between those apparently similar statements
Taking into account the proportions of female and male workers, they are in fact at equal risk. Only if you tipped the scales in favour of women employees – in other words, put blokes up for the chop first – would the numbers start to level out.
Unless there is a hidden policy which says councils and health services should sack women first (which would be both illegal and politically stupid) then women are not being targeted.
So, everything’s fair and even, then? Well, not exactly. There is another side to this issue, one which those engaged in the unfairness campaign would do well to examine.
There is a clear risk that the loss of jobs in the public sector will cause particular problems for women – and, indeed, for families and the private sector.
The public sector has led the way in adopting family-friendly working practices, allowing the use of flexible working, job share and other arrangements to enable women – and men - to balance the demands of home and family life while still being able to earn money or pursue a career. It isn’t unusual to find couples where one works in the private sector and one works in the public sector. That mix allows them to balance work with childcare and other family pressures.
Those women in the public sector who do lose their jobs may find it harder to secure employment in the private sector which offers the same level of family-friendly working conditions – or the same level of acceptance.
In that sense, the loss of jobs which allow parents to meet these conflicting demands could pose problems for all of us.
One final thought. Unions are probably right to be sensitive to unfairness towards women, since there are still assumptions in some of the more traditional quarters that it’s not so bad when a woman loses out on the basis that she may not be the main breadwinner.
However, these same unions must have been on autopilot when they pushed through the now notorious Job Evaluation process in the public sector. It may well have had exactly that effect.
This process, which has been ticking away like a timebomb for years, was basically an attempt to raise the pay levels of council staff at the bottom rung of the ladder by comparing the content of their jobs to that of other posts with higher scale points.
It was a laudable idea. But there was no new money to fund the sometimes significant, back-dated pay increases this process led to. And the process went down as well as up, concluding that while some staff apparently deserved more others should now be paid less.
It has been an inexorable and robotic exercise whose subjective complexities almost guaranteed inconsistencies and injustices.
So the significant pay rises enjoyed by some council workers have coincided with significant pay cuts among colleagues. Critics have said this is far from coincidental, and that an unfunded process launched in the interests of fairness and equality has simply shifted the problem from one set of pay scales to another.
Job Evaluation started out with the best of intentions. Yet some of its consequences have been distressing and grotesque. And many of its victims are women.