Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress
UQ Vice-Chancellor and President's International Women's Day message 2024
Each year on International Women’s Day, there are celebrations of progress and discussions of how far we have come.
This is an important and worthwhile exercise. However, it is also important to draw attention to areas where progress is stalling.
One such area in Australia is, unfortunately, the gender pay gap, which has persisted for decades, and remains stubbornly wide.
The pay gap is front of mind for many Australian women this International Women’s Day in particular, because for the first time, last month, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published the gender pay gaps by industry for all Australian companies with 100 employees or more.
Here at The University of Queensland (UQ), we are working very hard to achieve greater gender equality with targeted policies and programs. And so, I was pleased that UQ’s gender pay gap, at 3.1%, was lower than the gap in the Training and Education sector as a whole, at 5.2%, and significantly lower than the national gap.
The landmark WGEA data shows that dozens of companies have a pay gap of more than 50% and that nationally, the pay gap sits at 19%, which equates to $18,461 when comparing the median salary of men and women.
These figures are concerning and have generated conversations in the media and online – some of them suitably nuanced and insightful, while others which have not been so helpful.
For example, I have heard the argument made that women choose to earn less because they opt for lower paying roles with more flexibility rather than striving for the top of the company ladder.
And while this argument is politically convenient for some, it is simplistic, lacks context, and ultimately, is not backed up by evidence.
A 2022 KPMG report, which is aptly titled, She’s Price(d)less, and which is the only analysis of its kind in Australia, identified the underlying factors that are causing the gender pay gap.
According to this report, reduced workforce participation – women taking time out from their careers or reducing their hours to perform caring responsibilities – accounts for only a third of the pay gap. This is not insignificant, but it is clearly not the only issue.
Additionally, for the purpose of their Employer Pay Gap analysis, WGEA converted part-time and casual salaries into annualised full-time equivalents. In other words, they adjusted their dataset to account for reduced workforce participation as much as possible. Even after doing this, they still found a 19% gender pay gap in favour of men.
Which means that there are other drivers at play here.
According to KPMG’s study, the largest contributor to the gender pay gap in Australia remains the impact of systemic gender expectations and biases.
This might include conscious and unconscious bias in hiring practises and pay decisions, lack of workplace flexibility especially in senior positions, and cultural assumptions about the value of female dominated industries and roles.
Of course, it is illegal – and has been for decades – for a woman to be paid less than a man for the same work.
However, it would be naïve to suggest that gendered expectations and assumptions have disappeared. Indeed, it’s these that continue to underpin discrimination.
And this, I believe, is the crux of the challenge women now face. The change we require is cultural, not legal.
The suffragettes of the early 20th century and the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s were largely fighting for political and legal reforms.
Here in Australia, the likes of Mary Lee, Mary Colton, and Catherine Helen Spence, fought for women’s right to vote and participate in political life.
Later in the 20th century, it was women such as Merle Thornton, a UQ PhD candidate, and Rosalie Bognor, who protested women’s exclusion from public spaces by chaining themselves to the bar at the Regatta Hotel, forcing changes to discriminatory legislation.
These women were bold and brave, and they faced real and sometimes severe consequences.
However, the outcomes they were seeking were concrete changes – to laws or policies. They achieved an outcome and moved onto the next challenge, effectively ticking them off until women were equal under the law.
Now, the outcomes we require – the outcomes that will translate into equal opportunities for women in the workforce and hopefully close the gender pay gap – are cultural. We need to continue to focus on shifting societal beliefs relating to gender and work.
This is not an easy task, but it is what it will take to narrow the 19% pay gap.
And so, it is critically important that all workplaces do what they can to help encourage that shift.
By breaking down norms around what roles are considered appropriate for men and women, increasing the availability of flexible work for all employees, enhancing the availability and encouraging the uptake of shared parental care, and addressing unconscious biases in hiring practises and decisions about pay and promotions.
Here at UQ, we are committed to doing this – to achieving substantive equality, by addressing the cultural standards that underpin gender bias in our actions and creating a workplace that is genuinely equal for all.
There is no denying how far we have come, but there is still work to be done. And when it comes to accelerating progress, we must invest in what it will take to close the gender pay gap – namely, our expectations and our attitudes.
Professor Deborah Terry AC
Vice-Chancellor and President
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