by GED KEARNEY
When anyone asked my daughters what they wanted to be when they grew up I would always tell them to answer by saying ‘to be paid the same as a man’.
Most people would in turn respond with a furrowed brow.
The gender pay gap was a rarely acknowledged problem 10 or 20 years ago and even now, while each year we have Equal Pay Day as a way to highlight the fact that the gap remains, not much has changed.
If it had, the day wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be writing this.
The gap remains a persistently wide 17.5%, despite the publicity Equal Pay Day gets each year as it highlights the fact that women have to work an extra 64-odd days more than a man every single year to earn the same money.
Yes, that’s right – in 2012, women working full-time earn on average 17.5% less than men who also work full-time.
The figure has widened from the 17.2% it sat on the previous two years, then taking women an extra 63 days to earn what their male counterparts earned.
There’s a myriad of reasons explaining why the gap is getting worse, not better, and why women face restricted access to equal employment and career development opportunities in the workplace, leading to just 12.5% of Top 200 ASX companies with female directors, 3% with CEOs, and 2% with female chairs.
The top explanations include that women still tend to be the primary caregiver in the majority of families. When they take time out of the workforce, the reality is that by the time they return they have skipped a pay increase or two and their male colleagues (who haven’t had a break) have climbed the promotion ladder ahead of them.
There are other reasons for the pay gap – like the fact that women often leave their full time secure jobs after having children so that they can get ‘flexible’ hours via casual work or a part-time job, in lieu of the pay and career paths their previous role offered.