WUNRN
August 18, 2009
Sue
Dunlevy
AUSTRALIA - WOMEN'S PAY FALLS EVEN
FURTHER BEHIND MEN'S
The
gap in Australia between men's and women's weekly wages has widened to
$224 per week - its highest level in 21 years.
As
a result Equal Pay Day, marking the extra days a woman has to work every
financial year before her wages on average equal a man's, has slipped back four
days to September 1.
Last year women had to work
58 extra days to August 28 after the end of June to equal men's pay.
But this year women's wages
have fallen from 84.4 per cent of a man's to 82.5 per cent as the gap widened
by $28, from $196 per week.
The growing pay gap is
causing consternation 40 years after it became unlawful to pay women less than
men for work of equal value.
The Equal Opportunity for
Women in the Workplace Agency, which set up Equal Pay Day as a measure of wage
inequality, said the gap started from when women leave university.
Female graduates earn on
average $2000 a year less than male graduates, EOWA director Mairi Steel said,
and if current earning patterns continue the average 25-year-old male would
earn $2.4 million in the next 40 years and a female just $1.5 million.
Federal Parliament's Equal
Pay inquiry chairwoman Sharon Jackson said one factor was women were greatly
disadvantaged by the Howard Government's WorkChoices laws with their individual
contracts.
"I suspect the pay gap
was not assisted by the decision of the Fair Pay Commission that refused to
pass on an increase in the minimum wage," she said yesterday.
Feminist group 2020 said
the recession was not to blame as women's wages as a proportion of men's had
fallen for the past five years.
"The biggest reason is
people have taken their eye off the ball," 2020 spokeswoman Jenni Colwill
said.
Too often women were not
even aware they were paid less than men doing the same job in the same
organisation, she said.
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