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Gender pay gap costs $93 billion each year
16 March 2010
New research by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) found that pay inequity costs $93 billion per year to the Australian economy or 8.5% of GDP.
NATSEM found that 'being a woman' was the single largest reason for the gender pay gap (60%). This includes complicated factors such as women's choices of careers, jobs and work hours, consideration of caring responsibilities, women's work motivations, bargaining power and appetite for risk, as well as discrimination against women that occurs in the workplace.
Other contributing factors such as industry segregation and labour force history impact on the gender pay gap.
The Government is determined to improve women's economic security and has already taken several critical steps to achieve greater equality for women, including:
- Changes to the Fair Work Act to extend the equal remuneration provisions to include the right to equal pay for work of equal or comparative value: a more generous test allowing comparisons between comparable categories of work where the female dominated category may have been historically under-valued.
- A special bargaining stream for the low paid that will benefit many women in low paid sectors, such as cleaning, childcare and the community sector.
- 12 months unpaid parental leave for new parents - one of the ten legislated National Employment Standards. Like annual leave, public holidays and redundancy pay, unpaid parental leave is guaranteed to all employees covered by the new national Fair Work system.
- A new right to request flexible working arrangements on return to work. New parents can also request to extend parental leave by a further 12 months.
- A process for a pay equity test case under the new equal remuneration provisions of the Fair Work Act for the social and community services sector. (Our is case was lodged on 11 March 2010.)
- Improvements to child care including increasing the Child Care Tax Rebate to 50%.
Follow this link
to the Australian Government's webpage with the full report.
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