Thursday 18 September is International Equal Pay Day which is an opportunity to pause not just to measure pay differences, but to reckon with what those differences say about how we value care, and those who give it. In Scotland’s social care sector whose workforce is overwhelmingly female, underpaid, and overworked – the day must surely be more than symbolic. It must after decades of talk set a fire under those who in political leadership have prevaricated for so long.

Recent analysis shows that in health care and social care, the gender pay gap sits at 11.2%, meaning the average woman works 41 days a year effectively unpaid compared to a man.  This isn’t about skill or hours, about professionalism or competence – it’s about value.

In Scotland, over 80% of adult social care workers are women, a figure that should inspire pride – but instead points to persistent undervaluation. Roles demanding emotional labour, flexibility, resilience, and unglamorous hours remain low paid.

That we tolerate this imbalance speaks to gender bias entrenched across public services and policy, within our political leadership and critically within society’s valuing of social care work compared to other sectors.

Scotland fares better than the UK average in headline terms – but it is simply not enough. The full-time pay gap in Scotland is around 5.5%, compared to 11.3% across the UK.  But average figures mask deep disparities within sectors – especially social care.

If we closed the gender pay gap fully, Scotland’s economy could gain an estimated £17 billion.  More than figures, this is about fairness, dignity, and economic justice for women whose work supports us all and in truth is the engine of our economy.

There is a lot more that we can do.

We could finally start to stop talking about the success of paying the Living Wage to workers who allow us all to flourish and thrive and not just to live. A decade ago the Scottish Government was ahead of the curve when it introduced the Living Wage for frontline carers. But the shine has well and truly come off that trophy. Since then we have effectively gone back as more and more, greater and greater pay awards have gone to comparative roles in for instance the NHS. The pay gap is now wider than it was a decade ago. Unless pay is fair across roles – and regularly benchmarked against NHS scales – inequity remains.

The women who do the same or similar roles in social care require parity not promises.

Sectoral bargaining offers the promise of ensuring that pay scales reflect the complex, skilled, and emotional nature of caregiving. But we need government at national and local level to follow through beyond the rhetoric with the reality of real additional resource.

It is time to lift social care out of the poverty trap.

But it goes even further. I was involved in a fascinating discussion with colleagues across the sector this past week on Fair Work and most of our discussion centred around pay, terms and conditions. But I was reminded that there is another dimension to fair work that we often forget, and that is how we value people in the roles they have. I reflected on this in a recent blog but put simply I feel that one of the reasons the system has got away with underpaying women in social care is that we continue to think of the job of care and support as low value and low skilled. We continue to think of care as ‘women’s work’ and to reward it accordingly in a discriminatory manner.

At best social care’s undervaluation stems not from indifference, but from misconceptions: that it is work that is low-skilled, replaceable, optional. We must challenge that. Women chiefly bear the burden of such work – paid and unpaid – and I cannot but detect the hand of misogyny in fiscal and budgetary choices. We urgently need as a whole society to reframe caregiving as respected, essential, and skilled.

Women disproportionately take part-time roles to manage caregiving – for children and relatives – driving pay gaps wider as they age. Indeed, women aged 50–59 can face up to 19.7% pay gaps, along with lifetime earnings losses of £400,000.

Whilst we have increasingly attractive rights in relation to flexible working we need to do a lot more to incentivise secure working, re-entry opportunities, paid family leave, and career break re-entry pathways. We need to invest in schemes that counteract the ‘motherhood penalty’ and support sustained career progression.

And there are particular challenges in social care provision because of the unethical commissioning and contracting practices of public authorities. Ad I have said elsewhere:

‘Fair work is impossible without fair commissioning. For too long, contracts have been let based on cost above all else, driving a race to the bottom where providers struggle to meet the true costs of care. Commissioning must change. It must be relational rather than transactional, valuing continuity, quality and human connection. Contracts must build in the real costs of delivering fair work – not just wages, but pensions, in work benefits, training, supervision and career development. Procurement must become a tool to enable fair work, not undermine it.’

And behind all this we must call out the unequal treatment of frontline carers where they are everyday being stripped of professionalism.

‘Workers must be involved in decisions that affect their practice… We need to start trusting the social care front line with autonomy and the ability to discern and prioritise.’

Scotland’s Gender Equality Duty remains vital. Public bodies must publish equality objectives every three years, including on pay.  This must include social care commissioning and procurement and yet I have rarely seen those critical elements included in such gender impact assessments.

International Equal Pay Day is more than a marker – it’s a call. In care homes and homecare across Scotland, women’s labour sustains lives, communities, and dignity. Yet pay, policy, and perception continue to fall short.

If we truly value care, then it is our actions that matter not decades of aspiration. That means we must fund pay justice, not just pay increases. It means we urgently need as media, leaders and the public to reframe care from an unskilled default to a skilled vocation. It requires us to take active steps to sustain women’s careers, not force invisible caring costs onto them. And to achieve all this we need to embed equality in every funding, commissioning, and oversight mechanism.

Until then, the hope behind International Equal Pay Day risks diminishing every year.

The African poet Adesola Oluwafeyikemi Sarah Amoo wrote these words last year in a poem she entitled:

“Equal Worth, Unequal Pay: The Struggle for Fair Compensation”

She works with vigor, heart, and mind,
Yet finds her paychecks lag behind,
Her worth, her toil, her every day,
Still shadowed by unequal pay.

With every raise, a silent fight,
For justice in the dimmest light,
A climb that’s steep, with every step,
A battle that she won’t forget.

Her voice joins others, loud and clear,
Demanding change, no need to fear,
For equal work deserves its due,
A world where paychecks honor true.

Let fairness reign in every field,
Let parity be our shared yield,
For every woman, bold and bright,
Deserves her worth in dollar’s light.

https://adesolaoamoo.medium.com/equal-worth-unequal-pay-the-struggle-for-fair-compensation-6b3c644a28f2

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash