In the year 2089, we could be on Mars. We can only hope the female astronauts on those first pioneering missions are being paid the same salary as their male counterparts.
Because as things are currently progressing, we’ll be waiting until the year 2089 before women finally reach pay parity with men.
Indeed, women may well reach the red planet much earlier than they start receiving fair remuneration.
Currently, with projects like Mars One underway, in which Dutch entrepreneur and engineer Bas Lansdorp is attempting to fund the first settlers on Mars through a global reality TV project, women and men could reach the planet by 2024. Sure, it’s a big, ambitious project with plenty of holes and challenges to come, but it’s still an idea that aims to change humanity as we know it.
Sadly, there is no such large-scale innovative project in progress to change the reality for women across the world. According to the report released by Oxfam in the lead up to the Brisbane G20 Summit later this year, it will be 75 years before the principle of equal pay for equal work is realised – given the current rate of decline in the gender wage gap. Australia in particular has some work to do, given our gender pay gap doesn’t appear to be doing much closing, hovering between 15 and 18% in the last two decades, and currently standing at 17.1%, according to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.
As the Oxfam report explains, women are not only being paid less than men across the world but are still doing most of the unpaid labour, are under-represented in leadership and discriminated against in all areas of life.
While G20 leaders have previously committed to taking on the barriers confronting women’s workforce participation, it needs to go further. The G20 needs to consider gender equality as underpinning all of its development principles. We need big ideas. Wide-ranging commitments. Worldwide campaigns. Indeed, Oxfam has a few of its own, encouraging the G20 members to incorporate gender equality measures into governance, social infrastructure and economic policy, and to even consider redistributing taxes to account for wage gaps.
And if the G20 can’t manage it, then it may be up to private enterprise, or a big picture entrepreneur like Bas Lansdorp, to take on the project.
After all, there’s something in it for all of us. According to Oxfam, the per capita income across 15 major developing economics would increase by 14% by 2020 if women were paid the same rate as men. Meanwhile, equal pay would see the Eurozone’s GDP increase by 13% and the USA’s by 9%. Think of how many trips into space you could plan with that.
Goldman Sachs has previously estimated Australia is losing $195 billion or 13% of our own GDP due to our own gender pay gap.
We can’t dismiss gender inequality and the pay gap as a ‘women’s issue’. It’s no longer a matter of talking about such problems amongst ourselves. This is a challenge facing the entire planet.
If humanity can really get to Mars by 2024, then surely it can also get serious about tackling this issue too.