Twenty years ago, some of our best educated and most highly competent female leaders were still in primary school. It’s unlikely that they would have ever considered the possibility that, when pursuing their big job ambitions later in life, they’d be paid less than the boys they were competing against in the playground.
Even the mothers of such girls, despite experiencing gender-based workplace discrimination firsthand, would have found it difficult to believe that in two decades their girls would still find themselves earning significantly less than their male counterparts.
That’s because it’s long been assumed that just like time would solve the problem with a lack of women in leadership positions, time would also see the gender pay gap close. With women getting educated in equal numbers to men, there would be no excuses. A pipeline of talent would deliver on gender equality at work. The ‘rate of change’ — for women in leadership, in typically male-dominated industries, and in closing the gender pay gap — might be slow and incremental but it would still be change, and therefore progress after all.
Now, in the year 2014, we find that there may actually be no rate of change at all. Indeed, as the Workplace Gender Equality Agency has repeatedly stated in recent years, Australia’s gender pay gap (which is calculated from ABS figures) has hovered between the 15 and 18% marks for 20 years.
Perhaps, if it’d moved from 18% in 1994 to 15% in 2014, there would be something to celebrate, but comparing the two years offers a disappointing result. In March 2014, WGEA reported the pay gap as being 17.1%. In November 1994, it was 16.2%. Although the pay gap has decreased by half a percentage point since 2012, in the two decades since 1994 it’s actually increased by 0.9%.
Ten years ago, it hit its lowest ever point — at 14.9% in November 2004.
There are many reasons why a pay gap between men and women working full-time exists and persists: the lack of women in senior leadership positions, female-dominated industries that have historically paid less, the precarious nature of full-time work for many women (largely due to caring responsibilities), career breaks and outright discrimination.
But there are not as many reasons to explain why the pay gap would actually increase. I’ve asked a number of experts and consultants if they can explain why this figure might go backwards, but found few explanations.
The fact the pay gap is “hovering” and has actually increased shows that no amount of progress achieved can be considered as progress that will be sustained — at least not until the pay gap is eliminated altogether. This is as true for women in leadership (think, it wasn’t so long ago that we had record number of women in Cabinet, when today we have just one) as it is for the gender pay gap.
Women alone can’t solve this issue. The problem is systemic. The pay gap varies across different industries and changes dramatically across different states.This is an Australia-wide problem that requires a holistic response — from governments, business and anyone responsible for determining a person’s pay at work.
WGEA is due to report on the gender pay gap again on August 14. Let’s hope we see some improvement on the March 2014 result, but let’s not be too quick to celebrate any progress reported.