Pay gap claims high profile victim after Lisa Wilkinson quits Channel Nine

LISA Wilkinson is the last person you’d expect to be a victim of Australia’s shocking pay gap and her departure from Nine highlights a huge problem, writes Wendy Tuohy.

By 2017 estimates, it will take another 50 years for Australian women to be paid the same amount as Australian men for doing the same work, yet there are still those who deny the gender pay gap exists at all.

In July, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency estimated that given this appalling lag in closing the pay gap, there are women entering the workplace now who will not reach parity with male peers in their entire working life.

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Former Today co-host Lisa Wilkinson was hardly underpaid.

She was taking home $1.1 million a year for doing a very strong and consistent job of hosting Nine’s flagship breakfast show.

But, as has just been revealed, even with all of her years of experience and all of the credibility she lent to Today (acting as grounded sparring partner to a guy known for going on TV still drunk from the Logies the night before) Wilkinson was still considered to be worth about half of what her male colleague was getting.

Lisa Wilkinson is not worth half a Karl Stefanovic, writes Wendy Tuohy. Picture: AAP

Wilkinson’s contract was reportedly not renewed as pay negotiations broke down.

According to reports her representatives had been working for six months trying to broker equal pay with Stefanovic, who is reportedly on $2 million a year.

The figures are ridiculous by the standards of your average PAYE earner, for sure, but none the less if that kind of money is being thrown around by TV networks then there is absolutely no excuse for paying the woman just over half what the guy next to her is getting for the same work.

Wilkinson is the nation’s highest profile victim of our entrenched pay gap

Lisa Wilkinson is not worth half a Karl Stefanovic, especially as she was increasingly seen as the program’s rock to Stefanovic’s latter-day romantic puppy dog.

It’s insulting to her and to women to send the message that by virtue of her gender the female host is so much less valuable.

Clearly she isn’t, and clearly every woman doing the same work as a similarly qualified guy should warrant and receive equal pay.

Wilkinson has become the nation’s highest profile victim of our entrenched pay gap, which at around 17 per cent was cited by the annual PwC Women in Work Index of 2017 as the main reason Australian women fell from 15th most economically empowered in the OECD to 16th in 2016-17.

The TV show host could become a strong advocate for pay parity after this shock departure, and let’s hope she does.

The mere mortal women workers doing just as fine a job as the blokes next to them could certainly use some serious clout in our ongoing struggle for fairness.

Contact Wendy on Twitter @wtuohy or on Facebook