Equality Agency finds it will take 25 years for women to reach pay parity

That's according to Workplace Gender Equality Agency's 2022 annual report card.

Follow the trajectory of difference, and it will take 25 years for women to reach pay parity in Australia.

Economists and workplace advocates refer to this wage inequality as the 'gender pay gap', and it's caused by many different factors.

Data analysts calculate the pay gap by surveying a nation's wages and polling the numbers based on age and gender.

They then line up all of the men's wages and all of the women's wages from highest to lowest. The middle number - or the median - gives the difference.

In Australia, the gender pay gap sits at just over 14 per cent. This means that on average, each week men are earning an average of $263.90 more than women.

In order to earn the same average salary as men in Australia, women must work an additional 60 days after the end of the financial year.

For this reason, the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency declared 29 August 2022 as 'Equal Pay Day'. The date is 60 days after June 30.

The gender pay gap is complex.

Opponents of wage parity policies all over the world tend to throw up a few common arguments that point to its being a myth.

Unfortunately, though, the arguments tend to be made of straw, failing to factor in the range of complexities.

Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has often argued that men and women are simply not competing for the same jobs, and so cannot expect to be earning the same wages.

"We've seen that in Scandinavia, it's 20 to one female nurses to male, something like that," Mr Peterson told Cathy Newman in 2018, on Channel 4 News, England.

"Men and women won't insert themselves in the same category if you leave them alone to do it of their own accord."

While it is true that women are over-represented in lower paying professions, including in administration, teaching and health care. And men tend to be in trade and labour jobs, and other professions with higher wage ceilings.

But, people who argue that women are naturally drawn to nursing or childcare because they are more naturally nurturing ignore the social and economic factors that have shaped the workforce for generations.

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Women participated in manual labour jobs at a similar rate to men up until the Industrial Revolution. During World Wars, women continued to work in factories.

So it's not to say that women can't, but that in the current situation, they don't overwhelming at the moment take on these jobs.

Here's another one of those myths that tends to be trotted out by those who deny the existence of the gender pay gap.

If women are paid on average 14 per cent less than men, why would any company pay for a man? Why wouldn't the entire workforce be made up of women, if they're cheaper anyway?

The 14 per cent gender pay gap doesn't mean that women with the same expertise and experience as men are being paid less for the same jobs.

There is a term for that, it's 'gender discrimination', and it's illegal.

The pay divide is not a result of men and women being paid differently for the same jobs. It's much more complex than that.

It has more to do with the rate in which women are elevated to senior positions across industries.

According to the latest senior executive census by the Chief Executive Women, at the current rate of increase, it will take 100 years for women to make up 40 per cent of the CEO positions in Australia.

It means that inside Australia's top 300 companies, only four out of 28 new CEO appointments, have been women.

The survey showed 16 per cent of the top companies have no women in executive leadership positions, while only 17 per cent have gender balance at the top levels.

Some admit that there is a pay divide, but say that women cannot expect to earn the same as men if they take longer periods out of the workplace to have children.

There is some truth to this, of course, and it's revealed by the data when you look at the wage data based on age. The gap widens significantly from the age of 40.

In 2017, the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency calculated that 56 per cent of women scaled back their work hours or switched to a less demanding job after the birth of their first child.

That was compared to 19 per cent of first time fathers who did the same.

So the impact on a man's career after he becomes a father might be smaller, but it doesn't mean he doesn't pay a price.

Men often have to sacrifice time with their families in order to keep progressing in their career, as American lawyer and advocate Anne-Marie Slaughter explained to The Atlantic in 2016.

"Caregiving is the entire spectrum of raising a child ... it's the joy of being a parent, and men have been shut out of that," Ms Slaughter said.

"Many men say, well, I have work and I support my family, but I see my family very little. I would like to be much more involved in my family's lives.

"We value breadwinning so much more than caregiving. We've focused so much on advancing women, and really what we've meant is allowing women to be men."

So in order to fix the gender imbalance in the workplace, Ms Slaughter argues that we re-think the societal value we assign to traditional 'women's work' within the home.

Some companies provide a dedicated, properly paid leave period just for fathers.

When men are allowed to take extended parental leave without sacrificing their pay packet, it breaks the perception that women might be more of a risk to a company because they are more likely to take extended time off.

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