In the early 1980s when I headed the Office of the Status of Women during the Hawke government I used to travel the country giving speeches about how women were faring. One of the positive trends I liked to identify was the significant increase in women’s earnings in relation to men’s.
Sure, women still earned only 80.1¢ for every dollar men got but, I argued, given the trend in recent years we were speeding towards parity. No question about it. Just 14 years earlier, in 1970, women earned only 59.1¢ but that had risen to 70.4¢ by 1973 and to 77.4¢ in 1975. In 1979 the figure was 80.6¢. OK, in 1984 it was down a bit but, I used to confidently assert, this is just a temporary blip. There was no way the gender pay gap was not going to be banished from the Australian economy.
Back then I was certainly not pessimistic enough to envisage a scenario in which, almost 30 years later, in 2013, I would be trying to explain why women today earn only 83.5¢. Nor could I have foreseen that this gap is not merely persistent but that it is actually widening. Nine years ago, in August 2004, women almost hit the 85¢ mark, equalling a previous high. But it didn’t last and the gender pay gap now seems to be permanently stuck around 17.5 per cent. (This is according to ABS average weekly ordinary full-time earnings; on some other measures the gap is considerably wider.)
And these are just the averages. If you probe a bit, into occupation or location, you will find disparities in pay that are positively Dickensian. Women in Western Australia, for instance, earn 25 per cent less than their male colleagues, considerably less again in the mining regions. Women in the finance sector suffer the worst pay discrimination, with a gender pay gap of 32.7 per cent in May 2012 – a bigger gap than a year earlier.
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These statistics, released in August 2012 by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA, formerly known as EOWA, the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency), make for grim reading. There is barely an occupation, a job, a sector or an age group where women do not earn less, often hugely less, than men. Young women (aged 15-19) and women working part-time in clerical, services, sales or labouring jobs earned more than men. But it is difficult to find a statistical example of women and men being paid the same.
So much for equality.
And despite these few examples of a few categories of women earning more than men, the overall earnings outlook for Australian women is outrageously unequal.
In 2009 a report by the AMP and the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, based at the University of Canberra, made the shocking finding that Australian men with a bachelors degree or higher and with children could expect to earn $3.3 million over their working life: ”Nearly double the amount for women in the same category at $1.8 million,” the report states.
A 25-year-old woman starting her working life was likely to earn $1.5 million over the next 40 years, but a man the same age would haul in $2.4 million. That’s almost a million-dollar difference, a finding that led me at the time to assert that there was a million-dollar penalty to being a woman in Australia today.
Now, we find that women’s earnings prospects have deteriorated further.
Last October AMP/NATSEM released a new report that showed a 25-year-old woman with post-graduate qualifications would, over her lifetime, earn $2.49 million. The 25-year-old man who had sat beside her in class would, by contrast, accumulate $3.78 million.
This is bad enough but what enraged me about these findings is the fact that the 25-year-old woman with a post-graduate degree, earning her $2.49 million for her years of study, would take home less than a man with just a Year 12 credential who will earn $2.55 million.
What kind of incentive is that for women to study and gain qualifications?
Those who don’t want to face up to the brutal facts of sex discrimination against women in Australia in 2013 usually argue that these discrepancies can be accounted for in women’s interrupted workforce patterns (due to taking time out to have children) and their greater propensity to work part-time.
That proposition has been knocked on the head by this week’s release of figures showing a large increase in the past year of the gender pay gap in graduate starting salaries.
This has been a huge wake-up call.
WGEA has done us a great service in compiling and publishing these figures. In the past, we only knew of these discrepancies when individual professions publicised them. For instance, a few years ago the Law Council of Australia revealed that in NSW male law graduates were paid $70,300 in 2007 while women received only $63,500.
Now we know that law is one of the better professions when it comes to pay equity. As reported this week by WGEA, female law graduates suffer only a 7.8 per cent gender penalty. Women architects face a 17.3 per cent discrepancy while dentists’ pay lags behind men’s by 15.7 per cent.
You would never know that under Australian law women and men are meant to receive equal pay.
As Justice Mary Gaudron, the first woman to be appointed to the High Court, famously said in 1979: ”Equal pay was ‘won’ in 1969 and again in 1972 and yet again in 1974.” And, she added, ”We still don’t have it”.
In 2009 Julia Gillard, then minister for employment and workplace relations, included provisions for gender pay equity in her Fair Work legislation. But this law does not mandate equal pay, it merely provides that Fair Work Australia can make an order for equal remuneration after an application by an individual, a union or by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner.
There has been one spectacularly successful application to date, that by the Australian Services Union on behalf of low-paid workers, mostly women, in the community and services sector. The resulting order from FWA means these workers will receive pay rises of up to 40 per cent, phased in over several years, starting last December.
Such cases are valuable and there needs to be more of them but they can’t cover women in the professions or other non-award covered occupations. Something needs to be done that addresses this inequity in a systemic fashion.
As the figures make clear, the gender pay gap is a national scandal. It amounts to a gender tax, with women making a disproportionate contribution to the national economy. (And that’s on top of having the kids and doing most of the housework!)
It is often pointed out that if Australian women’s workforce participation was at the same level as men’s (79.7 per in cent instead of 65.3 per cent) it would add around 13 per cent to GDP. Much government policy, including the cruel pushing single mothers off the parenting payment on to Newstart, is designed to increase women’s workforce participation rate.
But women are entitled to question why they should bother working harder, or at all, when the lifetime penalty for doing so is well over $1 million.
The Prime Minister might want to add this one to her list of examples of sexism and misogyny at work in Australia today.
Originally published at http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/gender-pay-gap-still-a-disgrace-20130104-2c8o6.html
If the issue is “equal pay for equal work”, then could you please explain to me why women players at the Australian Open Tennis received the same wage as the men. The women play best of three sets. The men play best of five sets. Clearly, the work is not “equal”, and yet the pay packet is.
If every match went the distance, then the men have to do 67% more work in order to receive the same amount of pay. In fact, for the pay to be “equal”, then the women would have to go to three sets, while the men would have to win in straight sets. Is that equal? And yet “equal pay” at the Australian Open was hailed as a great thing.
Further, if all things are supposed to be “equal”, then why did it cost $294.90 per ticket to get into the women’s final, but $394.90 per ticket to get into the men’s final? Why are spectators to the men’s event expected to pay an extra $100 per ticket, if there is supposed to be “equality”?
The men’s final earns nearly $1.5 Million more than the women’s, the men work harder and longer, and yet their pay is “equal”. How is that just?
Dear Anne and other readers,
One of the starkest statistics quoted was comparing men and women with postgraduate qualifications. From memory Ross Gittins had a look at this in his book and found that in general post grad qualifications did not pay off in the long run regardless of gender. This effect would be amplified in shorter careers (a few years out with young children). Similarly Anne’s comparison between women graduates and school leaver men although stark would be closer if comparing average annual salary instead of total life income due to the three or more extra years in the work force the men had.
Those missing years salary at uni or with kids are hard to recover because every one’s salary tends to grow with seniority in the work force so if you take a year out when you are young it is really the big salary at the end that you miss out on (when you compare life’s earnings).
Inexcusable , yes. Complicated, Yes. Ask Ross!
Politicians, journalists, researchers etc have been manipulating statistics since they worked out they could, and the irony being that any viewing will appear to result in a different opinion. Either its the data source, type of data, where the data was collected… Thats just the start of disemminating a study, but hopefully you get my point.
So is the divide based on the simplistic view that some professions are valued more than others. We could reduce the gap by women simply entering male dominated careers. Of course conversely if we encourage more men into female dominated employment, would their collective being therefore increase the income of that profession?
We can look at the pay gap from many angles, but it appears to me that people only do that when for some reason they are opposed to accepting it actually exists.
I do believe without doubt, no matter how the statistical analysis is completed, no matter what industry, no matter that your personal experience is of equality. Across this country there is a pay inequity between women and men! So let’s not argue the semantics, let’s find solutions.
The crux of this issue is this. No amount of legislation or political momentum will shorten the gap. The gap exists for two reasons and only two reasons. 1. Men work harder and are more career driven in general. Women are more family driven and work more part time and have babies and take time off for that more then Men do. Now this is all massive generalisation but if you were to look at a small disparity and look for the root of it that would be it. However I don’t think that it ends there. The gap is too big to account for this and just this. 2. Sexism pre-exists in our society. Most of the people who hold power and wealth in our society are Men. Fullstop. Although some employers are looking to hire without gender in mind, most although not conscientiously doing it, are of the opinion that men are better workers. Ditto with promotion. So you have this society where there are some circles of Men who hold a lot of power and employ other men to take their positions. Cyclical I know. And although I do disagree with the strong and radical opinion Mz Summers I believe takes I do acknowledge that Sexism does exist within our society and this is a part of the issue (the other part being that men are naturally are better in a professional competitive situation). This does need to be adressed. But I think that legislation isn’t going to change this. I think we have framed this as a nation in the wrong regard. The government can introduce as many laws as it wants but it will not change people’s opinions misconceptions and beliefs. If an employer thinks that a man deserves a promotion more, partly because he is a man, the government can introduce a law to make sure he picks the women (which by the way is unfair), but it won’t change his opinion which is the real issue. If the government makes a law that states he should consider the man and women equally it is useless seing as he can base his decision in areas other then sexism and can show this in defense and no one I think can prove that he choose the man because he was man, because there are always other factors that he can show. The government has done as much as it can and there role is over, they have adressed the imbalance as much as they can. It is our job as a society now to adress the misconceptions and imbalances as much as we can rather then getting on our high horses and blaming the government for the issue. It is education that is the key. Raise a generation that believes in equality and fairness. It is not a political issue it is a social issue.
“men work harder and are more career driven in general”. Give me a break, women who work full time and have children have the equivalent of 2 (or 3!) working days because they come home and have to look after the children and do the house work. men on average do not work harder. If we are to take yourself as an example, it is only clear that men work harder at thinking up bullshit.
Anne, you’ve been very selective in your data. Of the 23 employment fields examined, there was only a statistical significant difference in 14. Of the 14, men averaged a higher salary than women in 7 – one was roughly the same, and in the other 7 women earned more than men.
To quote from the report:
“Over the years, GCA research has suggested that overall differences in median starting salaries between males and females can be partly explained in terms of the differing enrolment profiles of male and female students.
Male respondents have tended to be in the fields of education more highly ranked according to starting
salary while females have tended to come from the middle ranked fields.
An examination of the fields in the top five ranks in terms
of starting salaries (see Tables 3 and 4; dentistry, optometry, earth sciences, engineering, and medicine) shows that only 7.6 per cent of female respondents are within these fields, as opposed to 28.5 per cent of males (with the field of engineering the major factor in this difference).
The fields occupying ranks six to ten (which include
female dominated education and paramedical studies) account for 38.7 per cent of females and 21.1 per cent of males.”
In other words, in the top 5 highest paying employment fields, only 7.6% were female. This biases the average towards males.
And in the highly paid mining sector (my field), only 14% of employees are female. Many are in the lower paid clerical, admin or truck-driving jobs. Female geologist graduates earned $6,700 more than men. In 40 years in the industry, I’ve never met a female surveyor, and there are very few female electricians, mining engineers and metallurgists.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Being female hasn’t stopped Julia Gillard, Margarte Thatcher or Ita Buttrose from excelling in their fields.
I work in a profession where there is equal pay. Public Education. We start on the same salary and progress in incremental steps based on years service. It is true that women over their lives earn potentially less then men. I know this as my wife is a teacher and we started work at the same time. The fact is that we have had four children in the last nine years. In this time I have earned over $800,000 (I am an executive teacher) and my wife has earned $0. This accounts for most of the million dollars you are talking about. I am a strong believer in same work same pay. So please use starting salaries not lifetime average earnings in your arguments.
We are now in the situation where I am taking the next few years off work to look after the kids and my wife is returning to work. This will obviously close the gap between our pays, but again we cannot use lifetime averages because we are not the typical family where the male stays in work and the female only returns after the kids are older. Remember that statistics can be used to highlight any argument you want. they are not the be all and end all of writing (I did my masters in quantitative research, i know)
What dumbfounds me is the fact that whenever I read an article on this topic or any other pointing out pay inequality ( which are always written women) it is mostly MEN who comment on the articles, often in a defensive manner !
Of course these are average figures, there are limitations to statistical analysis, and there are many reaosns for the pay gap. The varied reasons for the pay gap doesn’t mean that the fact that it exists is not unjust and does not prove that men and women are not equal in the workforce.
As a female full time employee in a legal firm wih a typical overproportion of females at junior level and striking lack of women at senior levels, I can tell you that the pay gap exists and is alive and real in my workplace. There are several reaosns for this, here are a few good ones off the top of my head:
1. Partners need the old boys network to bring in work. Women dont have access to these networks. They exist and they are real, and you dont become a partner if you cant bring in work.
2. Female lawyers at promotion level dont have wives at home organising all other aspects of their lives, allowing them to focus on their careers.
3. Mem promote men. I see it every 6 months when promotions happen. Women dont go for it because they are not supported and encouraged to apply in the same way, and people think, oh well, she’ll want to have babies in the next few years anyway…
Rant over. Thanks
Just to point out that few dentists are actually salaried we generate our income by the work we do. I am confused how this could be used as evidence of a discriminatory payment gap? If women do indeed earn less in dentistry I would suggest it may be for other reasons rather than gender bias, such as a higher proportion of women in dentistry are employed on a part time basis etc.
As a business owner it troubles me there is so much miguided political and social agenda driven energy spent on this subject. Its politically motivated.
When I recruit my teams there are 3 qualities I look for and its regardless of gender, race or creed. They will recieve equal rights, opportunity and pay. Ambition doesnt always equate ability, nor does issue bashing equate ligitimate or authentic validation.
The data that is quoted in these findings are not same pay for same job. They are averages. We see the difference in pay as there are higher proportions of males in leadership positions. Until we get honest about the stats we won’t progress the issue. I’m dumbfounded that people keep using average pay figures and claim its a same job same pay issue. Literally dumbfounded. I can’t figure out if people are being lazy, dumb or deceptive. The recent pay discrepancys in graduates failed to factor in that there was a higher proportion of males in higher paid industries “engineering” credibility fail…
If discrimination truly exists at the gender level for graduates (or any workers), then this is grossly unfair. However this seems to be a misinterpretation of the graduate pay data. This type of oft-committed error was first documented by Carol Rappaport in 1995, and while subtle, its instance does not appear to be decreasing. She showed that in employment where wages were determined solely by a completlely non-discriminatory contract, looking at average wages by race, gender etc. would still show apparent discrimination, where it surely did not exist. (http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2950987?uid=3739832&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101633551607)
Graduates are made very aware of the starting salaries of particular firms – we know which firm pays what. I have not heard of a firm who offers different pay to different graduates (assuming they were hired into the same role). This applies to gender, type of university degree, years of education, grade point average, whether or not the student received an honours degree etc.
The graduate survey publisher confirmed this – that they were not aware of any individual firm who paid male and female graduates differently. Rather the differences in the summarised data can come about because of sample sizes and firm choice.
Of course, individual experience and even expert opinion is no substitute for hard data, so we have to ask why this disparity appeared in the data itself.
To begin, when we look at the original report, we find that the sample size for subjects like dentistry is far too small to conclude there’s actually a difference. The sample size is small enough that we would have equally found ‘discrimination’ between eye colors if broken down this way. It was very rare that the data showed the same average pay between men and women across industries – there were several instances of higher pay in both sectors. We should not interpret this as ‘employers discriminate in favour of women in physical sciences, and in favour of men in medicine’. Rather, if we look at the data itself, there are asterisks to show when differences are actually statistically significant. These are rare.
http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/research/researchreports/graduatesalaries/
Further, there are a multitude of reasons why pay levels may differ even within job types. It is well documented (within Australia and globally) that full time males generally choose jobs that have longer working hours than full time females.
(ABS – full time males work ~10% longer hours than full time females: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbytitle/9FE264503B18E93FCA257A470012947A?OpenDocument
OECD – ages 15yr to 24yr aged full time males work ~6% longer hours than full time females: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=AVE_HRS#)
We know that men generally select positions in firms that require greater working hours than women, and therefore we should expect to find a pay disparity, even within particular industries. If the working hour differential is 6% then we should expect a 6-10% pay differential (once accounting for overtime). This is indeed what the data shows, across industries.
Discrimination is of course important, and it surely exists in various forms. But there is no reasonable evidence to suggest it occurs by gender for university graduates.
I can see why there would be a gap over the lifetime amount when factoring in time off for children etc, but there is no excuse as to why the pay rates aren’t equal. I participated in a thought experiment recently which asked if it was a good idea to even go to school if a woman planned on having children. The assumptions included that the woman in question would stay home with no income for 15 years. Note that in thought experiments, you aren’t allowed to introduce new variables.
The team’s consensus, after considering a lot of facts (again, assuming that the pay disparity exists for this experiment) that no, a woman will be wasting her time going to tertiary education if she plans to have children.
1. She will not be working for 15 years (generalised, and assumed for the stipulation of the experiment, don’t bite my head off!)
2. On resumption of work, any skills what might have been acquired would be obsolete and she would start at the bottom anyway.
3. Why study for a career if on completion you don’t pursue it? time = money.
I won’t go into the discussion, but it was an interesting break down on a hypothetical life.
We did, however all agree that the pay for whatever job, in whichever field should most definitely be equal, commensurate with ability regardless of gender. We discovered that thinking like a government; which is essentially what the experiment mimics, takes choice and personal circumstance away from the decision. No one should be forced to give up education based on biology, and no one should have to work for less money based on it either.
There have been wars about race inequality, can’t we just learn from those mistakes and use it stamp out the gender gap? I guess it might be too much to ask.
I have a similarly male background in Education which then developed into the industrial and political activist role. In the years from 2007-2011, I contested 3 Federal elections and 1 NSW State by-election as an Independent. The reasons are part of my proposed movie: Snow in The Pocket. However, one of my main policy advocacies is for income splitting for “married couples” for tax purposes. Marriage to me is the basic partnership which then values both partners equally, not only in $$$ terms, but as the gender principle of equality, regardles of which (traditionally female) partner carries out the domestic service provision. That traditional role of females has largely gone either un-valued or under-valued and has been carried on into the workplace. It is interesting that in only professional roles or in business partnerships (involving both husband and wife) do we regard the contribution of each as being both equal and or complementary.
From my own experience as one of few males in a private primary school it was frustrating during enterprise bargaining to be largely unsupported by the females when negotiating a payrise. I was elected leader of the staff team in the view that males negotiate harder than females and my experience tells me there is truth in that. Meetings were told by female teachers that ‘they didnt want conflict’ ‘would accept what was offered’ ‘didnt want to upset the (female) Principal’. It was interesting that after I left the school the next payrise was just cpi and attendance at saturday sport became compulsory, something I had defeated several times previoulsy. The pay was lower and conditions worse. Until women negotiate in a tough and uncompromising manner they will always get a poorer deal and whinging won’t help.