In short:
More than half of Australian companies have improved their gender pay gap, compared to last year. But for every $1 a man earns, women, on average, still only earn 78 cents.
The gender pay gap is not about “equal pay for equal work”, but aims to quantify the difference between the average earnings of women and men in the workforce.
What’s next?
Anyone can view the gender pay gaps at companies that employ more than 5 million Australian workers, and their plans to reduce the gap.
It’s about working out what cultural forces are causing women to work less and helping to equalise those. It’s also about how jobs traditionally seen as female-dominated being paid less than male-dominated work. You say
I say
This, I think is one of the biggest issues. But, it’s not caused by employers discriminating against women. It’s also not something individual companies can solve. I think it’s an inherent flaw in our capitalist society. Caring for rich people could earn you a decent living, but if you’re caring for the people who really need it… Most of them can’t pay what it’s really worth.
Also, if there’s people willing to do the job at minimum wage, then there’s going to be CEOs willing to hire them and take all the profit for themselves / shareholders.
I don’t think banking should be paid as highly as it does, but mine workers earn so much because they literally risk their lives at work.
The reason why bankers earn so much probably is because they work with huge amounts of money, so it’s easier for them to demand a cut of it.
So, my question “why” was rhetorical. The point is that fundamentally, the money an industry gets represents its value to society, and society clearly does not value the sort of work that is associated with women as much as it does “men’s work”.