Women are exhausted and frustrated. They have every right to be

If you’re a woman in Australia and feeling a little exhausted, frustrated, underwhelmed or a combination of all three right now, know that I’m right there with you.

Admittedly, this is not the feel good post-International Women’s Day message I’d been hoping to write or that perhaps you’d been hoping to read. But there’s an elephant in the room, and it is my strong belief talking about it is always a better course of action than staying politely quiet and hoping the four-tonne beast tires of the party, finds its way to the exit and leaves of its own accord.

Despite years of gradual improvements, the gender pay gap remains a persistent problem for women everywhere.Credit: Dionne Gain

This week began with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) releasing its second annual gender pay gap report, which breaks down the reality of pay scales between male and female employees across Australian businesses with 100 employees or more.

For clarity, the gender pay gap relates to the average and/or median difference in salaries between men and women. It does not relate to men being paid more for performing the same role, which has been a legal requirement in Australia since 1969.

Though there are certainly some positive takeaways from this year’s WGEA report, overwhelmingly the report was a reminder of just how persistent a problem the pay gap is for millions of working women across Australia, and that closing the gap is taking far too long.

To start with, the report found that 72.2 per cent of Australian companies still have a gender pay gap that favours men, and that for every $1 an Australian man earned between 2023 and 2024, Australian women earned just 78¢.

Women are working longer hours than ever before and still doing the lion’s share of housework. Is it any wonder we’re not better represented in the senior ranks of employment?

Over the course of a year, this works out to be an extra $28,425 for men. Of this, $11,204 of the additional income relates to payments outside of base salary – bonuses, additional superannuation, overtime, and other negotiated perks.

Interestingly, the report found that the larger a company is, the smaller the gender pay gap is likely to be. But conversely, it was revealed that in companies where the total average remuneration is higher than normal, the larger the gap between male and female employees is likely to be.

For example, the top 25 per cent of employees nationally earn an average annual salary of $214,871, but this salary is twice as likely to go to a man than it is to a woman.

As WGEA chief executive Mary Wooldridge explained this week, companies with higher salaries tend to have larger pay gaps because additional perks such as bonuses and overtime payments overwhelmingly go to men, and thus dramatically increase the gap.

But the problem in trying to justify this or see it as an acceptable norm, Wooldridge pointed out, is that “many women don’t have access to that flexibility to take on those additional hours.”

“We fundamentally need to change the expectations, and that goes back to employers wanting to think differently about how they structure higher-paying and senior roles so that they enable women to participate,” she says.

This brings me to the second depressing reality of the week – the annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia report – and what it revealed about the realities for women across Australia.

Though we might like to believe we’ve come a long way, this year’s HILDA survey, which looks at national data from 2022, shows that Australian men who live in homes with a female partner and kids aged under 15 haven’t increased their contribution to housework since the survey began in 2002.

Despite the number of hours women work substantially increasing over the past two decades, they’re still doing 18.4 hours of unpaid domestic labour each week, while men do 43.3 per cent less, at just 12.8 hours per week.

In men’s defence, the HILDA data shows that when you look at the mean hours, men are working almost 10 hours more per week than women (34.2 hours to 25.7), more time commuting to and from work (3.7 hours per week to 2.7) and more time on outdoor tasks (3.6 hours to 2.4).

But when you look at hours spent on domestic labour (11.7 to 5.9) caring for children (8.8 hours to 4.5), household errands (4.5 to 3.4 hours) caring for relatives (1.9 hours to 1.1) it’s still far from coming out 50/50.

Even in households where there are no children, Australian women who live with a male partner are doing an average eight hours more of housework each week.

Perhaps the most concerning finding, though, is the mentality surrounding domestic labour. As the report’s co-author Dr Inga Lass said this week, “Most women feel that they do more than their fair share at home, whereas men usually believe they share the housework and care fairly with their partner.”

Given women are working longer hours than ever before, but still doing the lion’s share of unpaid housework and childcare, is it any wonder we’re not better represented in the senior ranks of employment, where additional hours are often demanded? Aside from already having a full plate, there quite literally aren’t enough hours in the day to do both.

But there is an obvious solution. And it’s one that many – me included – have been banging on about for years. As Wooldridge pointed out this week, “If you normalise … flexibility to return to work, and the capacity to work at senior levels in a way that balances other responsibilities across both genders, it’ll make good inroads to shifting that dynamic.”

Much like the pay gap, the data paints a very different reality from the feelings many men have. Like all cold, hard reality checks, finding that what you feel to be true and what is actually true doesn’t always feel nice.

But unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less real. And for as long as three in four Australian workplaces financially favour men over women, don’t be surprised that the women in your life are exhausted, frustrated, underwhelmed, or a combination of all three.

Victoria Devine is an award-winning retired financial adviser, bestselling author and host of Australia’s No.1 finance podcast, She’s on the Money. She is also the founder and co-director of Zella Money.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

Expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most of your money delivered to your inbox every Sunday. Sign up for our Real Money newsletter.