“Holding our economy back”: Government hopes to shift gender pay gap with new bill

On Wednesday, the federal government introduced new legislation to compel employers of 100 or more people to share wage data so that Australia’s gender pay gap information can be openly published.

The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill came before the lower house yesterday.

According to Minister for Women Katy Gallagher, it will take another 26 years to close the gender pay gap in Australia. On average, women earn $263.90 less than men each week.

The senator said global experience showed transparency regimes encouraged organisations to take action to address the gender pay gap in their workplace.

“On average, women working full-time can expect to earn 14.1% less than men per week in their pay packets,” Gallagher said.

“The gender pay gap is also holding our economy back with $51.8 billion a year lost when it comes to women’s pay.”

The Minister added the new laws would remove red tape for business so it would be easier to report remuneration data with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

Data provided by employers with WGEA to date will form part of the first reporting set to be published in 2024. The annual information will be available on the agency’s website.

“Women have waited long enough for the pay gap to close — let’s not wait another quarter of a century,” Gallagher said.

Previously, companies of a certain size reported remuneration data to WGEA but no individual employee remuneration was published. This meant current public data sets showed a breakdown of the gender pay gap according to industry (for example, mining, health care and social assistance, financial and insurance services, and construction industries) but not at an individual company level.

The law reforms make good on a federal election promise made by the Albanese government, and follows the recommendation of the Review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 conducted two years ago.

This article was first published by The Mandarin.