Talking to Helen Conway is invariably depressing but it’s no indictment on her. The director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) is engaging, smart and funny but the subject matter is dispiriting.
Today the topic is equal pay day. It marks another whole year in which Australian women have been paid 17.5% less than their male peers. Each week that amounts to roughly $266 or $13,482 over the course of a year. Another way of expressing it is that a female would have to work an additional 64 days a year to earn what the average man does.
For certainty the pay gap is the difference between the average of all female and all male full-time earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings. It cannot be dismissed by the fact more women work part-time than men because it does not calculate part-time earnings; it is like for like.
And these figures aren’t new — there’s just 0.1% difference between last year’s figures and these — which is precisely what makes the conversation with Conway, a former lawyer and corporate executive, so disheartening. It is 2013 and the gap between what men and women earn exists and persists.
“The news is depressing in that, once again, not much has changed,” Conway tells Women’s Agenda. “Of course part of the problem we have is explaining the pay gap. That high level extrapolated figure of 17.5% doesn’t necessarily resonate so lots of organisations switch off and move on to the next issue.”
That ambivalence is hugely influential because it stops individuals and companies from taking action. In some respects it’s not surprising that the pay gap hasn’t changed.
“There are significant factors that underpin the paygap that are continuing problems,” Conway says. “If those fundamentals haven’t changed the outcomes won’t either.”
The pay gap is, in many ways, representative all of the factors that contribute to inequality between men and women in the workforce. It is indicative of indirect and direct gender discrimination. The pay gap exists because women are over-represented in lower-paid roles and in lower-paid industries. The pay gap exists because women are under-represented in leadership positions. The pay gap exists because women’s skills are undervalued. The pay gap exists because women are still financially penalised, directly and indirectly, for taking career breaks to have children. The pay gap exists for reasons that can’t be explicitly explained.
The pay gap is more complex than any of those interrelated factors taken alone but Conway is adamant it can be overcome. It just requires some concerted focus.
“Our focus is on ensuring employers start tackling this by investing extra effort into pay equity,” she says. “The figure is there so there is obviously a problem. We want employers to understand – not dismiss – this. No one should assume it’s not a problem in their organisation without undertaking some analysis first.”
There are free tools for employers to use on the WGEA website that can help them undertake this analysis. “That will help individual employers understand whether they have a problem and will help them identify the action they have to take. It’s much more useful to look at organisational data and work from there rather than the 17.5% figure.”
Once the organisational analysis is done, appropriate targets can be set and relevant actions planned. “Once targets have been identified it’s a matter of making people accountable and transparently reporting progress,” Conway says.
There is no excuse for any employer saying they don’t know how to deal with this. Conway is adamant that enough research has been done and tools developed to help organisations and individuals overcome this bastion of inequality.
“If people don’t understand the problem we have every fact sheet and statistic to update them on the WGEA website,” Conway says “All we’re asking is for organisation to look at their own circumstances – they don’t need to look at this as a global problem. There is a legal and frankly moral obligation for employers to address any problem they have in their workplace that embeds gender bias in pay.”
Next year there will be even less room for excuses. “Under the new reporting legislation organisations will have to provide us with remuneration data. It means for the first time they will be forced to provide useful data that will help determine whether they have a problem with gender inequity and pay,” Conway says.
There won’t be any shaming because the data will not be publicly available but it will be a constructive starting point. Conway dismisses the suggestion that the pay gap is a problem individual women need to address themselves.
“Employers have all the information regarding salaries which individuals don’t and in this realm information is power,” she says. “The pay gap in the public sector is much lower than private sector and I believe the reason is because there is more transparency around public sector salaries.”
What individuals can do is keep this issue on the agenda. What action has your employer taken to tackle pay inequity?
The gender pay gap is stuck at 17.5%. Want to find out what you could earn as a man doing the same job? Calculate what you could earn below.
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