Closing the gender pay gap is not only essential for Australia's economic future but also reflects our commitment to building a society that champions equality and fairness for all.
While significant progress has been made in recent years, the gender pay gap in Australia remains persistent. According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), the national gender pay gap currently stands at 21.7 per cent, meaning that on average, women earn 78.3 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Beyond the headline figure
The headline gender pay gap figure, while important, masks significant variation across industries, occupations and demographic groups. When we look beyond the headline figure, a more complex picture emerges — one that requires an intersectional lens to fully understand.
Intersectionality, a concept developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, refers to the way in which different aspects of a person's identity — such as gender, race, disability status, age and sexual orientation — interact to shape their experiences and outcomes. When we apply an intersectional lens to the gender pay gap, we find that the gap is significantly larger for some groups of women than for others.
The intersectional pay gap
Research from the Diversity Council Australia found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women earn significantly less than non-Indigenous women, and that women with disability face a larger pay gap than women without disability. Women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds also face compounded disadvantage in the labour market.
These intersectional pay gaps reflect the compounding effects of multiple forms of discrimination and disadvantage. Addressing them requires more than gender-focused pay equity strategies — it requires an approach that recognises and addresses the multiple dimensions of inequality that affect different groups of women.
What organisations can do
Organisations that are serious about pay equity need to go beyond analysing the overall gender pay gap to examine pay equity across different demographic groups. This requires collecting and analysing data on pay by gender, race, disability status and other relevant characteristics, and using this data to identify and address specific pay equity issues.
At Equi Consultancy Partners, we help organisations develop pay equity strategies that are intersectional in their approach. If your organisation is looking to strengthen its approach to pay equity, we welcome the conversation.