Why is there still such a pay gap between men and women in full-time paid work?
This working week is still catch-up time for women on average weekly ordinary-time earnings. Until Tuesday September 1 they will earn less than men did to last June 30. So a coalition of women’s groups is asking for action to close the pay gap. The gender gap was reduced by 19% between 1972-79 (up to 80%), after the male minimum wage was abolished and equal pay for work of equal value approved. It has been up to 86% and now it’s back to 82.5%. So why is this happening, considering women are now better educated, more likely to be in paid work and there are measures in place supposedly to deal with prejudice?
The figures from various industries are interesting and counter the idea that most of the gap is just that women work fewer hours and years. Even when women are in the same industries as men, they earn less, but ABS figures show the gap is biggest in the male-dominated areas, e.g.
Finance 31%, property and business services 26%
mining 25%, government 7%, education 10%
hospitality 12%
In 2008, the pay gap between men and women in finance grew from 24% to 28%, which raises an interesting question about the effects of global financial crisis and who has benefited, after maybe contributing to its causation?
And it’s not the arrival of family responsibilities as new graduates often show clear gender differences, even in the same professional areas, e.g. law and medicine. There is evidence that 40 years after the first decision started the process of equal pay for work of equal value, we are still not there.
The facts are that the cultures of the workplace, community and related attitudes of men and women have not shifted as dramatically as the public rhetoric suggests. We still have a workplace model that survives almost unchanged since the industrial revolution when men first moved out of the home and into the workplace. This became the public sphere and became more important and regulated than what was left outside.
Workplace reform shortened official hours (but they’ve gone up unofficially), emphasised the value of hours worked (the more the better) and assumed the presentism (being there) was an unquestioned good, even when technology offered wider options. The private sphere and its needs were excluded except for some idea of family wages, now defunct. Changes of assumptions about good workers, good bosses, hours and place based locations shifted marginally and women who joined were expected to “fit in” with some minor adjustments.
So it is not surprising we are still under-paid for similar jobs. There are bits that could be fixed by using existing legal and educations processes that can be used to alleviate the differences. Signals of continued discrimination include:
- Women get paid less for the same jobs, sometimes despite better qualifications and experience, often because they don’t ask for more
- Women are less likely to apply for higher-paid positions but tend to more qualified when they do
- Women tend to do many lower-paid jobs because they echo the feminine private roles; e.g. care and support roles and few men will do them
- These types of jobs are paid less than similar skill jobs usually done by men; e.g. child care versus car care because feminised skills are undervalued
- Women are more often in publicly funded jobs in NGOs, etc, which pay minimum wage rates and awards. Harder to fix assumptions include deeply held views about what is highly valued in the workplaces and out of them
- Full-time work hours are overly long and not getting any shorter and people ignore the higher productivity of most part-timers
- Women still do most of the unpaid care/domestic work, so cut back paid-work hours to take this on
- Women still have to conform to different criteria of male-defined workplace behaviours for women to be acceptable; i.e. need to be nicer not tough, not aggressive
- Workplaces cultures still value limited male-defined skills and credentials excluding “soft skills” as natural attributes that do not need to be paid for
Data for May showed full-time ordinary time earnings rose by 6.5% for males and 5.2% for females, showing how women’s pay is going backwards. So women’s groups are asking women to wear red to work next Tuesday to illustrate their deficit and give their boss a red rose to remind him we too have thorns, if this gap does not decrease.
Eva, I think your article pretty much sums it up – but how do we change these attitudes? We (allegedly) have equality, equal pay etc etc, but still these problems persist. Its not our attitudes that have to change, its mens – are you listening you chaps?
I thought that statistically speaking men and women get paid the same amount of money when they enter full time work. Why doesn’t anyone take into account the fact that a lot of women take time out from working for years to raise a family so when they go back to work they have less experience than their male counterparts which equates to them not rising as high and getting paid better. Also isn’t it true that an unmarried woman earns more money than an unmarried man?
Eva,
Whilst I support equal pay for equal work, I think you could benefit from re – examining this issue analytically, without your preconceived notions that the Great Oppressor (men) is trying to keep women in their place.
To address some of the issues that you raise and give you food for thought, in order to balance your somewhat one – sided view of this issue,
To address your comments about the gender gaps in selected industries, I can only speak about one, which is mining. You state, and I’m sure you’re correct, that full time female employees in mining earn an average of 25 % less than full time male employees. This in itself means nothing.
Yes, nothing.
If you were to break it down by job description so that we could see how many of those full time male and female employees work in what positions, that would be an improvement. It would still be inadequate and misleading.
When you can demonstrate by publishing detailed statistics, that female employees in a given specific discipline (let’s say, Geologist. Or better yet, let’s say, air leg driller. Or Jumbo Drill Rig Operator.) with EQUIVALENT QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE and ABILITY, are payed less than their male counterparts, in jobs which are very similar in requirements, seniority and responsibility, within the same organisation, in the same geographical area and with the same working conditions, THEN you will have an argument which means something.
I have been 15 years in mining, and I can tell you a few things anecdotally.
1. The highest paid positions are those in upper management. These are generally occupied by men, disproportionately so even given that mining is a male dominated profession. I believe this is because men are generally more competitive and ambitious. These are characteristics which are rewarded by the capitalist system because they result in outcomes which produce greater returns for the shareholder. I’m not saying that, holistically speaking, the (masculine dominated) characteristics such as ambition, ruthlessness, competitiveness etc. are in any way better or more intrinsically valuable than the (feminine dominated) characteristics of nurturing, caring, cooperation and consideration. Far from it. But the fact is that the economic and business model under which we operate, rewards masculine traits. It is NOT some great big conspiracy to pay women less, they just are generally less well equipped to rise to senior positions under this system due to their differing skill sets. Note, this is not even taking into consideration the perfectly valid point made by JACKS (above) that many women choose to “interrupt” or terminate a career to take time out to raise a family. Again, I am not disparaging this choice: my own wife made this decision and I value her equal contribution to our family’s wellbeing, very highly. But you can’t take 10 years or so out of your career (for any reason) and then complain that you haven’t risen as far as your contemporaries who have been developing their professional skills and experience during that 10 years. These are the sacrifices we make.
2. The next highest paid positions in mining are the dangerous and low skilled jobs underground. Not the environmental coordinator. Not the Human Resources Coordinator. Not the Receptionist. (You can cry stereotype all you want. I work in the industry. I’ve worked at dozens of mine sites. The bulk of women in the industry work in administrative positions.) It is the Jumbo operators, drillers, air leg drillers, and bogger operators who make the really big bucks. Why? Their jobs are dangerous, hot, uncomfortable, dirty, repetitive, manually strenuous and hard on your body. This makes it hard to get people to do these jobs. This means you have to pay them lots to do it. That’s supply and demand. Most women don’t want to do these jobs because they value their safety, health, comfort, and rewarding work environment, more than men do. This means there are lots of women (and men, I might add) who are willing to work in an office on a minesite, and not very many who are willing to do the dirty dangerous hard slog underground. Supply and demand. That’s why the big bucks go to the blokes. Female drillers get paid just as much as male ones.
While we’re on the subject of supply and demand, let’s look at the points you raise about career choices and how they are valued. You write:-
“•Women tend to do many lower-paid jobs because they echo the feminine private roles; e.g. care and support roles and few men will do them
•These types of jobs are paid less than similar skill jobs usually done by men; e.g. child care versus car care because feminised skills are undervalued”
I agree, with reservations. Our society should value feminised skills more. BUT.
These jobs are not paid less because “feminised skills are undervalued”. These jobs are paid less because of supply and demand. Child Care: a few weeks in a classroom gives you a Certificate in Child care, which enables you to work in child care. The bulk of the skills required are already possessed by most women (and I take my hat off to their instinctive ability to solve problems which confound me when it comes to caring for children!) But these skills are very common and easily available. Compare this with what you describe as “Car Care”. I presume you mean automotive mechanical trades, which require the completion of a four year apprenticeship including 3 years of part time trade schooling and a full four years on intensive on the job training before you are allowed to work in the industry. If you think these jobs are comparable in importance, I would suggest that the care of children is far more important. If you think they are comparable in terms of the skills, you may be right. They are NOT, however, comparable in terms of the AVAILABILITY of those skills. Very few people can do a couple of weeks training, Apply skills they already have, and fix a care. Most women I know can do exactly that when it comes to child care. This means that Child Care workers are, as the phrase goes, “a dime a dozen” – supply exceeds demand and the price for their services is low.
This is a complex subject, and there is far more to it than you have allowed for in your simplistic analysis. Your use of statistics is clumsy and misleading. Are you really suggesting that employers have identically qualified staff, performing identical roles, with identical responsibilities and working conditions, and then pay the female ones less? I’m telling you that’s not the case. I’ve sat on the employing side of the desk for long enough to know that before you even ask for applicants, you have decided on the appropriate salary range. Variations are commensurate with experience and qualifications – and that’s it. Please get the chip off your shoulder, stop looking at this through the lens of your persecution complex, and consider the whole picture.
Eva, I agree that although many formal battles have been won, we have made little progress in informal cultural ways.
I work in a heavily male dominated branch of a particular profession. Less than 20% are women. The sexism I encounter is daily, subtle, and brutal. There is little doubt in my mind that many of the men (certainly, I’m pleased to say, not all) would prefer the women to stop turning up and leave the work to them. Every time I encourage more young women to do what I do, they all say “oh, not me”, as they still do not envisage this to be a job for them.
There is a long, long way to go before the general attitudes of the men and many women really change to allow true equality of opportunity. Of course, part of the change will come from societal support of women in the work they do in the home and in the workforce: proper childcare, home help, ie, that is, practical community acknowledgement of how hard the work of women is in toto and proper supports to allow them to fulfil their home role and to make a more public contribution.
Indeed, we have gone backwards in proper support for women in this regard. Women used to enjoy family/neighbourly support and/or paid assistance of cleaning/help with children/household help. Now it appears to be a weakness of character and/or an indulgence to obtain proper assistance in the home.
In short, we still need profound cultural changes to occur before we see true equality in the workforce.
Women who want to work in traditionally male-dominated fields – such as mining, but not mining administration – must not only contend with the challenges of the job, they must also overcome social attitudes that prescribe a woman’s place is not underground, is not in a job that is manually strenuous or one that is dirty but is in the office, or generally away from the action.
Comparing childcare and automotive mechanical trades – firstly, I went to uni with people studying early childhood education, at least a three year degree. My aunt has completed post-graduate studies in the same – more taxing certainly than three weeks study to get a piece of paper to add to skills that are apparently part of the package of being a woman. Childcare is certainly undervalued in our society perhaps b/c it is perceived as a feminine domain – but rather being just the way things are this ultimately needs a correction, and suggesting that women have childcare skills immediately available to them b/c they are women indicates an ignorance as to what consitutes quality childcare and is also a mass generalisation. I would also suggest that these problem solving skills women inherently have in regards to caring for children are actually learned ‘on the job’ in being the primary parental care-giver.
Secondly, the automotive mechanical trade was not presented as a feasible option to me ten years ago when I was considering my future career post-high school, or to any of the girls in my class. Of the boys though, a number left school in year ten to begin mechanical apprenticeships as did others once they completed the HSC. Like Eva Cox identifies, occupations are gendered and the feminised careers are usually paid less then those perceived as masculine. I don’t see how the correct summation of this trend constitutes a ‘persecution complex’.
And finally, the choice that many woman make to put a career on hold to raise a family is a not really a choice. I’m sure that many women love the time they can spend with their children in this situation, but it is still expected in a way and unusual for a father to put his career on hold for five or ten years to care for his young family. So the ‘choice’ is between a mother looking after her children or a professional doing it, and it is one that is socially loaded.