Equal Pay Day 2022 is here and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) is calling on employers to take urgent action on gender equality.
The date — Monday, August 29 –represents the 60 extra days after the end of the financial year that Australian women must work, on average, to earn the same annual salary as men.
Equal pay for women and men in the same performing role has been a legal requirement in Australia since 1969. And yet, there’s still a significant gender pay gap.
This year, the gap between men’s and women’s pay was 14.1 per cent– a rise of 0.3 percentage points over the last six months.
Equal Pay Day tells us the additional number of days that women must work each financial year to earn the say as men, whereas the national gender pay gap tells us how much more men earn than women. Both are essential pieces of information in the fight for gender equality.
In an effort to improve gender equality in the workplace, WGEA works closely with employers to provide them with advice, tools and resources to close the gender pay gap.
WGEA Director, Mary Wooldridge says, “On Equal Pay Day 2022, WGEA is encouraging employers to make gender equality a priority by implementing five achievable, key steps that will speed up the rate of change.”
The first step WGEA calls for is to conduct a pay gap audit to develop an action plan that establishes accountability.
On average, women working full-time earned $1,609 per week while men working full-time earned $1,872.90 per week. The full-time average weekly earnings difference is $263.90 per week.
Next, WGEA says employers should set targets to promote gender equality at all levels of the organisation and design leadership roles that can be part-time and promote women into leadership positions.
The last two recommendations include normalising flexible working arrangements and introducing a robust gender neutral paid parental leave policy.
Embracing these practices and incorporating gender equality as a core part of their business strategy has already paid off for some employers, says Wooldridge, with WGEA seeing reports on benefits to employee recruitment and retention, productivity and company profits.
Taking these actions will also be increasingly important for organisations with the Federal Government’s commitment that WGEA will publish employer-level gender pay gaps in the near future.
Wooldridge notes that taking action on gender equality is not only the right thing to do but also a sensible business decision to prepare an organisation for gender pay gap transparency and be able to articulate what analysis has been done and what steps have been taken to close it.
“We encourage all employers to take gender equality seriously, incorporate it into their business strategy and to take action to address it,” she says. “This will be good for business and good for all Australians.
With a high inflation rate of 6.1 per cent combined with the gender pay gap, Wooldridge says it is becoming harder for women to make ends meet. The cost of living is going up and daily essentials are more expensive.
“While the gender pay gap persists, women’s skills, capabilities and potential are not being fully realised or valued,” says Wooldridge.
“Further, while women are earning less, they’re spending the same as men on the essentials we all need to survive.”