Women's pay in Australia is stubbornly stuck at 19 percent below men - creating a 'Gender Discrimination Tax'
New research reveals that Australian company training is designed to impede women's progress
MELBOURNE, Australia, 8 July 2024, Women in the Australian workforce are effectively taxed at a median additional rate of 19 percent for their work versus their male counterparts, according to diversity, equity and inclusion specialist and campaigner Michelle Redfern. The discrepancy means that women on average spend nine years of their careers working for free versus their male counterparts.
"Study after study points to a stubborn pay gap in the Australian workforce and it's now time to call it out for what it is: a discriminatory tax on women's employment," she said.
"Worse still, my research reveals that nearly all women feel blocked in their attempts to try and make up the difference by getting promoted due to a lack of targeted in-house training, coaching and mentoring. Two thirds (66%) say that their leaders' coaching and mentoring skills are poor to non-existent."
She added: "If women were unionised as a gender, this unfair discrepancy would have been eliminated years ago. As it is, progress to equality in the workplace is painfully and punitively slow, bound up in opaque policies and flimsy targets."
Worldwide analysis by the Pew Research Center found that while women make up 54% of the global workforce, they then form the minority at every rung from 'entry level manager' to CEO.
Michelle Redfern's organisation, michelleredfern.com focuses on lobbying, education and self-help learning with the sole objective of closing the leadership gender gap. Her analysis shows that women at executive level experience fewer than a third of company board members are women, according to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).
"If businesses won't invest in developing their women with the strategic, financial and business acumen (BQ) skills that they need to progress, they risk losing talented women to competitors. I see lots of opportunity, to help accelerate the progress for them."
The Advancing Women programme is designed to fill this shortfall in leadership training to equip women to navigate a workplace system that is still fundamentally stacked against them. The programme takes the form of online and face to face learning, bootcamps, bespoke coaching, and mentoring circles. The popular women's Lead to Soar summits, are designed to help educate women who aspire to leadership positions and acquire critical business skills and equip them with knowledge and tools to earn the right for advancement.
"What concerns me the most is the implication that women's work is 19 percent less valuable than their male counterparts'. This isn't the case and it's absurd that across the 45 years of an average career, women are working for nine years free of charge versus their male counterparts. It's time to speed up the promotion of women, pay them fairly and get rid of the 'GDT'."
