Equal pay should lift productivity

As Mary Gaudron, Australia’s first female High Court judge, said 25 years ago: “We got equal pay once, then we got it again, and then we got it again, and now we still don’t have it.” The same holds true today, regrettably, with a median gender pay gap of 19 per cent across 5000 employers, not-for-profits, universities and schools. And some of the nation’s major companies have much larger gaps. The “name and shame” data compiled and released by the federal Workplace Gender Equality Agency is based on median base salaries and remuneration. It shows that in 37 Australian companies women earn at least 50 per cent less than men; 107 ­employers pay women between 40 and 50 per cent less; and 135 companies pay them 30 to 40 per cent less. On the positive side, associate editor Helen Trinca reported in Tuesday’s paper, the gap in some companies such as CSL, Rio Tinto, Wesfarmers, Woolworths, Coles and James Hardie is as low as 1.8 to 10 per cent, with the data overwhelmingly favouring women in about 8 per cent of workplaces.

Women have come a long way in the Australian workforce since November 1966 when the “marriage bar” in the Commonwealth Public Service was abolished. It had left married women two choices – to resign or to hide their marital status. As social attitudes evolved, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission accepted the principle of equal pay for equal work in 1969 after a push by unions led by the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union with a young Bob Hawke as the lead advocate.

Across a half-century the gender pay gap has been slow to close, as the report released on Monday shows. Some of the new data is crude, showing median, not average, earnings (that will change from next year) and the public service is excluded. As Qantas Group chief people officer Catherine Walsh says, the pay gap in her company “does not mean women are paid less than men to do the same jobs … but shows there is a significant under-representation of women in highly paid roles like pilots and engineers across airlines globally”.

At a time of poor productivity and skill shortages, the data should be a springboard for important discussions. The fact more firms are drawing closer to parity – such as the big four consultancy firms – suggests that, in addition to cultural changes, employers are recognising the benefits of attracting good staff, regardless of gender, and rewarding them fairly. Such issues are best worked out within enterprises rather than imposed from outside.