The Gender Pay Gap Costs Aussie Women Nearly $1 Billion Per Week
"The gender pay gap has remained stubbornly unchanged despite action across the public and private sector to tackle gender inequality."
Australia’s gender pay gap problem costs women nearly $1 billion per week, a new report has revealed.
The research from KPMG, Diversity Council Australia, and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency — released on Wednesday — estimated the gender pay gap to be $51.8 billion annually.
“Since our last report in 2019, the gender pay gap has remained stubbornly unchanged despite action across the public and private sector to tackle gender inequality,” said KPMG Chairman Alison Kitchen. “This report shows that gender discrimination continues to be the single largest contributor to the gender pay gap. It also shows a worrying trend in the rise of industry and occupation segregation. We must collectively increase our efforts to build a better and fairer Australia.”
To make matters worse, the landmark report concluded that there is no reason, apart from straight-up discrimination, for the discrepancy — quashing previous anecdotal claims that having children, and the time off that comes with it, was the reason for the gap.
According to the study, women in Australia are paid $2.55 less per hour on average than their male counterparts for the same job. However, the time women generally take off to raise children only accounts for a gap of 51 cents per hour. An additional 50 cents is attributed to women generally preferring lower paying jobs such as nursing or teaching, instead of mining, while 27 cents is based on the proportion of women choosing to work part time. Ultimately, the study found that 91 cents per hour (or 36 percent) is based on nothing more than gender discrimination.
They also found that the gender pay gap worsens over time, from six percent at the start of a woman’s career, compared to 18 percent in top management roles.
The biggest discrepancy found in the report was in the education sector, where women were paid $6.33 less per hour on average than their male counterparts. Additionally, despite making up 70 percent of the workforce in the sector, women only account for 53 percent of senior management positions.
Other major discrepancies were found in the social assistance and healthcare sectors, while manufacturing saw the smallest gap of just 2.2 percent less than their male counterparts — however, this is still a pay gap for the exact same role.