Good news, girlies! A new bill which will require companies with more than 100 employees to publish their gender pay gap data online has passed through parliament.
As a woman who has to deal with getting paid less than my male counterparts and is a nosy Nellie who loves watching companies get their ass handed to them, this news really tickles my pickle.
As reported by Women’s Agenda, the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 aims to promote pay transparency and close that bloody bastard known as “the gender pay gap”.
According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Australia’s national gender pay gap is 13.3 per cent. So for every dollar on average a bloke earns, women cop 87 cents.
When you crunch the numbers, this means women take home, on average, $253.50 less than the fellas each week. Over the course of a year, that figure adds up to a stonking $13,182 which, let’s be real, would be really fucking helpful given the cozzie livs.
You love to see it.
Labor’s Closing the Gender Pay Gap Bill is a critical step toward in achieving women’s economic equality and it just passed the Parliament 🙌#auspol pic.twitter.com/uz7VZ5lt1R
— Katy Gallagher (@SenKatyG) March 29, 2023
Per The Sydney Morning Herald, the WGEA will be required to share gender pay gap data for private businesses from early 2024. It’ll need to spill the beans on public sector workers the following year.
WGEA chief executive Mary Wooldridge said airing the dirty laundry of naughty businesses will force them to take accountability .
“Publishing employer gender pay gaps will provide [workers] deeper insights on their employer’s progress, while jobseekers can get a clearer indication of a prospective employer’s commitment to ensuring the contributions of all employees are equally valued and rewarded,” Wooldridge said, per the SMH.
“This is also an opportunity for employers who may have been slow to prioritise gender equality to get serious about change.”
In deeply grim news, Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said current projections show it would take not one, not two, but nearly three decades to close the gender pay gap. Twenty six years, to be precise.
“Women have waited long enough for the pay gap to close,” she said in the Senate on Thursday.
“The government will not let them wait another quarter of a century.”
Good. As it shouldn’t.
I, for one, simply cannot wait to see shonky businesses get named and shamed. Drag them!
