Gender pay gap reporting in Australia is failing to deliver constructive change, with an international study on the subject saying current practices are failing to account for a significant chunk of the country’s workforce.
Despite Australia being one of the first countries to legislate for gender equality, the nation has ranked joint last, with the United Kingdom, on gender pay gap reporting in the “Bridging the gap?” report by King’s College London and the Australian National University.
The study used 11 indicators to rank women’s pay relative to men in Australia, France, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Australia and the UK scored four out of 11 each, while Spain scored eight-and-half. France came second (8), followed by South Africa (5.5) and Sweden (5).
A significant proportion of the Australian workforce is not reflected in the governments gender pay gap data.Credit:Shutterstock
Women in Australia have to work an extra 61 days to earn the same as the average man. The gender pay gap for full-time employees in Australia is 14.2 per cent, only marginally better than at the turn of the century, and 30 per cent for all employees, the report’s authors said.
Dr Miriam Glennie, who co-authored the report, said the extent of Australia’s gender inequality is hidden by the fact the country only requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide an annual report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.
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“The main failure in Australia and the UK is that, unlike the other European nations assessed, neither country requires companies to work to close their gap and there’s no mandate to implement action plans that lead to specific outcomes or improvements for women,” Dr Glennie said.
For the first time ever, every company in the ASX 200 index now has at least one woman director, with female representation on boards climbing to 33.7 per cent. Nicola Wakefield Evans, director of Lendlease and Macquarie and chair of the 30% club, said this was achieved by publicly releasing the quarterly diversity reports of listed companies.
However, Dr Glennie said while board diversity was encouraging, by only mandating private sector employers of size to report to the agency, a significant proportion of the Australian workforce is not reflected in the government’s gender pay gap data.
