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The Forum > Article Comments > Women are paid the same as men for equal work > Comments

Women are paid the same as men for equal work : Comments

By Judith Sloan and Mark Wooden, published 23/5/2011

The decision handed down by Fair Work Australia on equal remuneration may not be the milestone it sounds. suggesting the it is a milestone may be a bit heroic at this stage.

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I think you have provided an interesting analysis of this decision. I think the current issue is the disparity between government and non-government workers, because,as you say, both men and women in the non government sector get paid the same. There is no disputing the historical roots of this industry though so systemic sexism can't be overlooked and I for one am glad it hasn't been.

Its not going to elicit quick gains and before the final decision is handed down on how much to pay human service workers, more will be lost to government and the private sector.

Some things to consider include:
workers in some states do get reasonable remuneration, it is not every state that needs to improve their award. I have worked in Queensland, NSW and Tasmania and I think the NGO sector in Tasmania is the worst for remuneration.

Salary sacrifice and employment conditions can compensate for the low pay however it would be rare that it bridges the gap between government and non-government salaries and especially here in Tasmania.

And increases will be dependent on funding. . . . we know increases have not been funded in the Federal budget this year. And in my state, we are in financial crisis so I can't see there being any joy there.

We're playing wait and see
Posted by ShelO, Monday, 23 May 2011 10:51:38 AM
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A good summary of the FWA decision.

Gender may play a role in some industries but correlation is not necessarily causation. Child care workers are mainly women but men in those roles get paid the same rate. It is more about the value placed on certain jobs and sometimes it just happens that women make up the majority of the workforce in some sectors. You don't see the Office for Women very often pushing for reform at the lower levels of employment nor pushing for better family supports external to the working family mindset.

There was an article in today's CT about the poor wages received by security officers (mainly men) who don't get compensated fairly for night shift work. The basic rate is low often around $17/hr only a bit higher than the wage my teenage daughter earned in the retail sector.

The Commonwealth Government now outsources a number of lower level clerical roles (data entry, courier, record managemnt, archiving, mail sorting/scanning, switchboard, call centre) the rate even with a casual loading is often less than the basic hourly rate of a permanent public servant at the same level. Nobody, including the CPSU is doing much about this phenomenon.

The problem is about greed, lack of respect for those 'types' of work, and the pressure on companies to win contracts. The people who lose out are more often the wage earners. Wage disparity is not only about gender in many cases it is more to do with the peculiarities of different sectors and overall wage disparity.
Posted by pelican, Monday, 23 May 2011 11:11:47 AM
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The decision by the full bench to recognise that equal remuneration between men and women workers in the SACS sector when compared to the local and state government was lukewarm and possibly the safest decision to make at this stage.

The tribunal considered several assertions made by the applicants, including that the low pay of these mostly women workers is due to characteristics peculiar to their sector. Characteristics such as female dominated, small workplaces, low union density, care-based work carrying with it assumptions of being 'women's work, high proportion of part-time employees, volunteer boards.
The group of workers to whom the SACS sector were compared to were not a contrivance, as the phrase 'carefully selected' in the Article suggests, but were a natural and logical comparison. Those in the local government and state government doing the same work (community development workers, youth workers, disability support workers and etc etc) are the logical comparator groups. These public sector workers have higher wages because they include sub-groups of workers that have 'industrial muscle', such as garbos and prison officers. These are male-dominated groups and are more likely to take industrial action. Their success lifts and maintains relativities between the female dominated SACS-type occupations.

The salary sacrifice issue was correctly not regarded as part of remuneration. In part this is because salary sacrifcie only benefits those who can afford to purchase those items that then attract the tax benefits. Such as mortgages and private school fees. Because their benefit only flows to those who can use them, there is immediately a built-in inequity.

Evidence submitted showed that women who are Award dependent do get paid slightly more than men who are Award dependent. This advantage is at the lowest pay levels only. As the rates of pay increase, the gender pay gap grows and men outstrip women’s pay very quickly. Women in the sector are more likely to be Award dependent, or on Agreements that only pass on the Award rates or just above the Award rates. Men are more likely to receive above-award rates, whether through enterprise bargaining or other means.
Posted by Gia, Monday, 23 May 2011 11:17:00 AM
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Good to see the truth...

Pity the feminist liars (scholars as they like to call themselves) are generously funded, while people like the authors, who tell the truth, have no endless rivers fo funding.
Posted by partTimeParent, Monday, 23 May 2011 11:41:12 AM
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I can never get my head around the inconsistencies of this issue.

On the one hand, there is a promoted feminist ethos (which I agree with) that there is no such thing as wonen's work or men's work, and to say otherwise is considered sexist. Except it seems, if jobs that women choose (choose being the key word) are paid less; Then they are designated women's jobs, and that they are paid less magically makes for gender inequality? Pull the other one.

PS: There seems some comparrison between public and private sector workers here that I cannot fathom? Can anyone explain why lazy public sector workers with cushy beneifts (which apparently aren't to be included in analysis) can even be compared with the private sector? Should this now go across the board for all public and private jobs? WOW! Watch for a flood of people to the public sector! Great cushy conditions, flex time, picnic days, all the maternity leave you want, AND private sector wages!

Also, if nurses and care workers are unhappy, why cant they just strike like low income 'man job' workers have always done? Most of them probably aren't even the primary wage for their family. They should show some balls and fight if there really is a problem. This 'I'm a care worker so somebody might die' business is BS. Fire fighters and Cops and all sorts of essential services have had strikes before.

As I always say with any gender pay gap argument, it's not who earns the money, it's who spends it. THAT's what needs to be studied. Money is a means to an end, the end is ignored and that's stupid! I'll bet you'll find the women spend more than the men. Just look at any shopping mall and count the women's fashion shops.
Posted by Houellebecq, Monday, 23 May 2011 11:53:47 AM
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<I can never get my head around the inconsistencies of this issue.>

That can cause more than a few migranes, trying look for rational explanations, when the actual facts and figures are deliberately distorted.

Eeva Sodhi showed that various methodologies are combined

<Justice Canada instructs its research contractors to "make a careful choice about which indicators are going to be applied , because you want the indicators to reflect the gendered approach you are developing" >
http://web.archive.org/web/20050317002453/http://www.nojustice.info/PerceptionsarenotFacts.htm

<Research is expected to be a practice by which an unbiased, impartial analysis of facts proves or disproves a hypothesis.

When it comes to the social policy research on which Canadian(Australian) family law and policies are based, our expectations are shattered. In many cases the researchers steering our social agenda have agendas of their own. Data are misrepresented or intentionally taken out of context to reinforce the researchers' perspectives. Questionable conclusions are drawn and accepted as reality by policy makers. And no one takes the time to get to the core data to find out what's really going on.> Eeva Sodhi.

So basically logical facts and data go through a process of intellectual distortion. Data and facts become meaningless until the process of intellectual distortion produces the desired 'meaning' such as one sensational headline "Proof women are paid less than men".

Conversely in another paper there was an article about fathers working too much/hard. Spending less time with the family.

So logically if fathers put in more hours of paid labour than mothers, of course fathers are going to earn more than mothers.

So yes fathers are paid more than mothers, but then mothers get to spend what the fathers earn, mainly because fathers are working they dont have much free time.
Posted by JamesH, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 4:54:50 AM
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