Australia's Sexist Pay Gap

[emilykate]

There is a 18% pay gap between men and women in Australia, meaning that for every $1 men earn, women are getting 82c.

For educated women, the situation is even worse still, as women with a tertiary education earn 30% less than their equivalently educated male counterparts - that's just 70c for every $!!

Female surgeons earn 41% less than male surgeons and those few female CEOs earn only 2/3rds of the median wage of their male counterparts.



Perhaps the most worrying thing is THE PAY GAP IN AUSTRALIA IS ACTUALLY INCREASING. When it comes to pay, we are going BACKWARDS on gender equality. The pay gap is at the same level it was in 1972, almost 4 decades ago!

[emilykate]

Source: www.equalpayday.com.au/

Equal Pay Day - 4 September 2010
Equal Pay Day was held on Tuesday 1 September in Australia in 2009, to signify the point into a year that a woman must work to earn what a man made in the previous financial year.

In 2010, that day has shifted further out to 4 September, representing an increase in the gender pay gap from 17% in 2009 to 18% in 2010.

Do you believe in equal pay for equal work?
We do. But not everyone gets it.

Here are the facts:

• Women working full-time, year-round in Australia are paid only about 82 cents for every dollar earned by men
  
• A 1% decrease, rather than the 1% increase witnessed, in the 2009 gender pay gap of 17% to 16% would have increased GDP per capita by approximately $260 which equates to approx. $5,497Million or 0.5% of GDP
  
• The 2009 pay gap of 17% was estimated to cost the Australian economy $93Billion. That cost just got higher
  
• Lower wages mean less lifetime earnings for women giving them a lifetime of fewer choices
  
• Some women in CEO and finance positions earn less than half of their male equivalents
  
• The pay gap is higher in the private sector (21.7%) than in the public sector (12.1%)
  
• The average superannuation payout to a woman is projected to be $150,000, that’s half of the average payout to a man in 2010-11
  
• The 18% gender pay gap is a national average that opens up to over 29.3% in some industry sectors
  
• Pay inequity reveals systemic discrimination and continued under-valuation of women’s work
  
• Equal pay for women raises family income which means more money to spend on food, housing and child care
  
• Single mothers and working families lose thousands of dollars annually to the wage gap
  
• A NATSEM report released in March 2010 shows that simply being a woman accounts for 60% of the difference between men's and women's earnings
  
• If things don't change, the average 25 year old male will earn $2.4Million over the next forty years; for the average 25 year old female, that figure is just $1.5Million
  

(Although, I dislike the use of the terms 'working families' as differentiated from 'single mothers' - after all, the single mother is WORKING to support her FAMILY. It's unfortunate that our vernacular is yet to embrace the truer, more inclusive meaning of 'family'.)

[Erica Chan]

*winces*. What makes this even worse is that you might expect this sort of pay gap in, say, the developing world. But in Australia? Like, y'know, the land of the young and free?

Thanks for collating all these facts. They really are a great reminder as to why we still need feminism.