Gender pay gap hits record high, prompting calls for Government action

Updated

The gender pay gap has hit a record high of 18.8 per cent according to Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures, prompting calls for the Federal Government to reverse the upward trend.

Men now earn almost $300 more per week than women based on the average weekly earnings for full-time workers.

The latest figures represent the biggest gender pay gap since the ABS began collecting the data in 1994.

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Ged Kearney said while the data reflected pay across the board, women could be paid less in the same jobs as men.

Women also made up the majority of workers in some industries where earnings were low.

The latest figures compared the average weekly full-time earnings of men - $1,587.50 - and found women were about $298 worse off.

"Now, [on top of] all the traditional barriers that women face - participating fully in the workforce, access to affordable child care, and getting paid your full salary or a decent salary while you're on maternity leave - women are overrepresented in the community and care sector or those industries that are paid less," Ms Kearney said.

"We have to ask ourselves why we undervalue those industries.

"This is really distressing; the gender pay gap is rising and nothing seems to be done about it."

Women also remain under-represented on boards, even in industries where women make up the majority of the workforce.

"It is very odd that industries where you have very large female representation in the workforce, they nevertheless don't have that reflected in the boards of those companies and we think that's something that really needs to change," said Gerard Noonan, president of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI).

Ms Kearney said some industries were particularly lagging when it came to equality in pay.

"In some sectors like the finance sector, for example, the gender pay gap is enormous," she said.

"I think at one point it was up around 40 per cent. You've got to really look at the culture in those industries, in those organisations, to really understand what's happening."

Government plans to 'water down' workplace gender reporting

Earlier this week the Federal Government announced changes to gender reporting guidelines for businesses.

For businesses with 100 employees or more there will still be required gender and pay reporting, but the Government is planning to scrap more stringent workplace gender equality reporting introduced under the former Labor government, which would have included recording the gender of people applying for jobs and chief executive salaries.

The Government said it was a decision made in consultation with business and that some reporting requirements were too onerous and might not necessarily contribute to gender equality.

But Ms Kearney said employers must be required to keep the data in order to erode the pay disparity.

"To look at a culture in an organisation to tackle something like this, we need data and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency recommended some data collection processes that would help, but we have just seen this Government decide to water down those requirements," she said.

"Watering down data collection requirements is going to be, I think, a major step backwards in closing the gender pay gap.

"We'll lose a good opportunity to change the culture in corporations around this issue."

Topics: women, business-economics-and-finance, work, federal-government, australia

First posted