In short:
More than half of Australian companies have improved their gender pay gap, compared to last year. But for every $1 a man earns, women, on average, still only earn 78 cents.
The gender pay gap is not about “equal pay for equal work”, but aims to quantify the difference between the average earnings of women and men in the workforce.
What’s next?
Anyone can view the gender pay gaps at companies that employ more than 5 million Australian workers, and their plans to reduce the gap.
I don’t think banking should be paid as highly as it does, but mine workers earn so much because they literally risk their lives at work.
The reason why bankers earn so much probably is because they work with huge amounts of money, so it’s easier for them to demand a cut of it.
So, my question “why” was rhetorical. The point is that fundamentally, the money an industry gets represents its value to society, and society clearly does not value the sort of work that is associated with women as much as it does “men’s work”.
I don’t think that the money that an industry gets represents it’s value to society, not even close. I don’t think that a CEO brings 1000 times more value than a normal worker.
What I really see happening is that every industry tries to take as much of everyones money as they can and if they are in a position where they can force us to do it, they will.
There is no fair wage distribution, not even among white men.
Women earning less money is just one of the symptoms in this ever more broken system where big corporations control more and more of our everyday lives.
Ah sorry, you’ve misunderstood me. When I said its “value to society”, I meant the value that society places on it, not the value that it provides to society.