Childcare 'needs men to raise pay'

James Tweed
Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Childcare will continue to be a low-status and low-pay profession as long as few men work in it, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) said last week. The EOC made its comments after its general secretary, Julie Mellor, addressed the Trades Union Congress in Blackpool, telling delegates that the pay gap between men and women in Britain would not close until society placed greater value on the work women did. She said, 'Equal pay law as it stands does not work for many low-paid women. If they only work with other women, then they do not have the opportunity to compare their pay with a man's pay - which is what the law requires.'