Last week, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency raised somewhat of a storm when it released its interpretation of data from Graduate Careers Australia, showing that the disparity between graduate salaries for women and men had more than doubled from $2000 to $5000 during 2012 and claiming that the gender pay gap across all industries was an average 9.1%.
Graduate Careers Australia disputed the Agency’s claim, saying it had “missed vital paragraphs” in the report, relatively low response numbers, for example in dentistry, and the over-representation of male graduates in what the GCA report refers to as “the fields of education more highly ranked according to starting salary”.
Gender equality in the workplace is a nuanced topic, and its causes are notoriously difficult to identify, as are the methods of measuring contentious pay gaps.
The gender pay gap has been blamed on issues including the absence of women from the workforce during childbearing years, job selection and career choice, the fact that many women work part-time hours, a lower number of discretionary payments (like overtime and bonus payments), the frequent undervaluing of what is traditionally regarded as “women’s work” (such as caring work), and the proposition that women are less self-promoting and less likely to negotiate their wage at the start of employment.
Recent research which was cited by The Atlantic noted that women are more likely to negotiate a wage when the prospective employer explicitly states that the salary is negotiable.
Regardless of how the Workplace Gender Equality Agency interpreted the data, there is still a full-time gender pay gap that has worsened since reaching an historic lowering low in 2004 during the Howard government. The gap is now around 17.5%.
If we are serious not just about equalising gender pay but also about increasing women’s workforce participation and productivity, lifting living standards and, ultimately, paying higher real wages, we need to approach the issue pragmatically.
I’m not sure how many female graduates spend their final semester at university thinking about how much more the young men in their classes are likely to get paid in their graduate roles.
To my mind, the real issue is equipping young graduates with the necessary information and skills to ensure they go in to the job market with their eyes wide open both about how much they ought to be earning, and their right to negotiate that wage, as well as broader education and information on financial literacy.
This is especially pertinent after recent reports indicated that more and more women own their own small businesses – or as Bankwest research shows, an increase by 25% of the number of women working for themselves.
Women need to be equipped with the skills to manage both their careers and their personal finances, and while part of this process will always come down to initiative, providing the best starting block through school, university and vocational education, will ultimately mean fewer women are left homeless and in poverty later in life.
At the employer end, research shows that for small business owners, gender equality is not always a top priority. Something as simple as putting together a quantifiable job description against which employee performance can be measured and managed gives employees a tool with which to lever a discussion around wages.
The gender pay gap is not something that can be solved overnight, but rather than fixate on the problem we should be looking at practical and workable ways to make sure educators and employers are doing the right thing, and equipping our graduates with the knowledge and skills to successfully navigate the workplace.