Workplace Gender Equality Agency report shows slow progress on closing the pay gap

A new report warns many women employed today will be retired by the time they could achieve equal pay with their male colleagues.

Australian women face a 26-year wait for the day they will earn equal pay to their male colleagues, new research predicts.

If current trends continue, the pay gap between male and female executives will close within 10 years. But it will take more than a quarter of a century across all full-time roles for pay parity, a Workplace Gender Equality Agency report released today warns.

And complacency about the gap is often worse in female-dominated industries or organisations, which the report finds are less likely to pay attention to gender equality.

The agency says employers can fast-track gains by setting targets for female participation on boards and regularly auditing what their male and female workers are paid.

Over the past seven years, the difference in average total remuneration – including superannuation and bonuses – for male and female workers at companies with more than 100 workers has fallen from 24.7 per cent to 20.1 per cent.

The gap is widest among technicians and tradespeople (25.4 per cent), sales workers (22.4 per cent) and labourers (20 per cent). It is narrowest in clerical and administrative roles (7.7 per cent) and community and personal services jobs (9.6 per cent). While the gap may be smaller in industries with more women, “this does not necessarily mean that women are better off”, the report, compiled by bankwest and Curtin University, notes. For example, male community and personal service workers “will earn on average $78,200 each year, however, women, who dominate this occupation class, can expect to earn … $70,700”.

“It is organisations with a higher concentration of women that tend to be the most apathetic,” the report says. Regularly monitoring the difference in pay for male and female staff is key to closing the gap. However, the agency notes more than half of the organisations that report to it “still do not undertake a regular pay gap analysis”.

SA’s Interim Equal Opportunity Commissioner Steph Halliday urged those not doing so to “consider looking at what was holding them back”. “The key to attracting talented, skilled women to top jobs is making sure they know their contribution is valued and paying them what they deserve,” she said.

SA Working Women’s Centre director Abbey Kendall said the persistent pay gap demonstrated the “devaluation of women’s work”.

“Not only is there a gender pay gap because there is sex discrimination going on, but the work that women are doing is valued less and we’ve allowed those industries to become casualised to the point where the wages are being driven down further,” she said.