The unacceptable pay gap between Australian women and men widened in the last financial year with full-time working women earning 18% less than men.

“Today we are marking Equal Pay Day – 66 days after the end of the financial year, which is the number of extra days women would have to work to earn the same as men in this country,” said ACTU President Ged Kearney on the eve of Equal Pay Day 2010.

“Women now make up half the workforce and are more skilled and educated than any other time in Australian history. Yet men are still paid more through overtime, penalty rates and bonuses. One worrying outcome is that women end up with less than half the superannuation savings of men when they retire, often after a lifetime of working and caring for family.”

Ms Kearney said the pay gap has a detrimental impact across the whole economy.

   * NATSEM estimates that the average Australian woman will earn almost $1 million less over her lifetime than the average Australian man.
   * Female tertiary graduates earn $2000 less than male graduates in their first job, and $7500 less after 5 years in the workforce.  
   * Women are two and a half times more likely to live in poverty in their old age than men.
   * A new survey of 1100 professional women by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia (APESMA) found that nearly half (47.4%) said their career progress had been affected by a male-dominated workplace culture.


Women earned the right to equal pay back in 1972 after decades of having their wages set at a lower rate than men, however this has not translated into a fair and equal outcome.

She said a national Equal Pay Test Case for community and social workers currently underway could start to address the massive imbalance between pay rates in male and female dominated industries where the work could be judged as equal in value.

The ACTU along with Business and Professional Women Australia is a founder of the Equal Pay Alliance of about 150 business, union, NGO and community groups. The alliance is holding events around Australia to mark Equal Pay Day (4 September).

You still can`t get a root Crook?

Women prefer to work in different types of fields than than men do, group by group. This has nothing to do with discrimination.

quite simply in my experience men are better workers than woman, woman will spend hours a week gossiping whilst men are working.

Anyone who has worked in an office enviroment will agree.

This has more to do with the fact that women and men have vastly different psychological profiles from one another and choose different professions that suit their own preferences.

Go into any primary school and tell me how many male teachers you can spot. Women pick secure, steady professions at a far greater rate than men do. They are simply less entrepreneurial, competetive and object oriented. They would largely rather work with and around other people than things.

aikmann4 wrote on Sep 4^th, 2010 at 4:45pm:

Women prefer to work in different types of fields than than men do, group by group. This has nothing to do with discrimination.

It's quite interesting. In my profession of Finance & Accounting, when we enter the profession I reckon the split is 60/40 females/guys.

Any time I have hired at the entry level $60-$90k level, out of the CV's I get the vast majority of those who would be good in the job are girls.
In fact I have hired way more girls than guys. I prefer their work ethic.

But then when we reach out early 30s and you talk about the Finance Controller/Manager up to CFO levels, the girls disappear.

Is it because they don't like the additional responsibility?
Is because at those levels you have to make some, at times, hard decisions which don't sit well with you for a while?
Is it because they don't like the dog-eat-dog climate?
Or is it because they stop and have families? Like with a car, you take your foot off the gas and you fall behind.

Probably a combination and different reasons like above.

It's just a fact of life.

No point sooking over it. My wife earned more than me every year since we met, but now she's taken time out she's a fair bit behind again.

Quote:

But then when we reach out early 30s and you talk about the Finance Controller/Manager up to CFO levels, the girls disappear.

As I said before, women prefer low-risk and less pressure.

If it were true that in real terms women are being paid less than men, then the workforce would be flooded with women. If an employer could pay a woman 75c for every dollar he pays a man, he would hire nobody but women. Common sense tells us it can't be true that employers can get away with hiring women for less pay than men.

Studies show that women and men have different motivations for choosing an occupation. With men, it's usually all about the money. Whatever job they can get that pays them the most, they will take. Regardless of whether they actually like the job or if the hours take time away from family and recreation. Women, perhaps more wisely, do look at things like hours and how much they would actually enjoy the job. Women tend to value family time and recreational time, in terms of balancing that with their work, than men. That's one reason why women find themselves in lower paying jobs. Because how much they take home isn't always the driving force for women like it is for men.

Another obvious reason is biological. Women have babies. This has also been studied and the studies show that women typically pick jobs that would allow them to take a few years off to have and raise a child. So not a job where in those few years the field would have changed and advanced so much that they would need to train or study again before returning to that job. So again, personal choice often puts women into positions that aren't as high-paying as some of the positions men choose to get into because they don't care so much about some of the factors women care about.

It's true - women aren't paid more or less than men when you look at the issue from a level playing field.

People are paid on experience.

When I hire for a role, I get CVs from girls and guys. The role is paying what it is paying, no matter who comes through the door.

The reason women are paid less on average is because the girls who graduated with me are now a lot of the time either looking after little ones or have taken off on average 2 years compared to me.

I have 2 years more experience than they do as a result.

Hence they are less attractive to employers for roles I go to, because they come off the hamster wheel for a period of time and are not getting back and running with as much pace as the rest of us.

I do know girls who graduated with me, have no children, work as hard, have taken no time off and earn the same or more.

It's not gender related, it's experience related.

I would add that a good looking girl always gets the nod over a guy in my book when interviewing!

Sadly HR were always a step in the process and they tended to be women so wouldn't share my enthusiasm.

If it's a mundane type role, what's the harm in getting in some good looking women into the office eh?