Of course, the scary sounding Workplace Gender Equality Agency should never have been established but I guess the government needed to give some jobs to feminist types who missed out on the Emily List kick into parliament. But seriously, the quality of its work is a joke. Take this reference from a feminist who clearly has no understanding of statistics or the workings of markets, Ann Summers.
WGEA has done us a great service in compiling and publishing these figures. In the past, we only knew of these discrepancies when individual professions publicised them. For instance, a few years ago the Law Council of Australia revealed that in NSW male law graduates were paid $70,300 in 2007 while women received only $63,500.
Now we know that law is one of the better professions when it comes to pay equity. As reported this week by WGEA, female law graduates suffer only a 7.8 per cent gender penalty. Women architects face a 17.3 per cent discrepancy while dentists’ pay lags behind men’s by 15.7 per cent.
You would never know that under Australian law women and men are meant to receive equal pay.
Now perhaps we should give her the benefit of the doubt as to when she penned this rubbish, but the organisation that actually collected these figures – the Graduate Careers Council of Australia – had to issue a clarification. It turns out the WGEA was talking through its hat and completely misrepresenting the figures.
(There have been doubts about the GCCA figures for years – they deal with only recent graduates aged 25 years and under and there are very low response rates, particularly in some fields, to the survey. There is no account taken for different hours of work and no hourly rates of pay are constructed. In other words, pretty much not worth the pieces of paper on which it is printed.)
A FEDERAL government agency has oversimplified data about graduate pay, resulting in the misrepresentation of gender pay differences, Graduate Careers Australia (GCA) says.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) said the gender pay gap for young university graduates had more than doubled last year, from $2000 to $5000 a year. However, there was in fact no change and the gap remains at three per cent.
GCA policy and strategy adviser Bruce Guthrie said the agency had read data from its annual Australian Graduate Survey in a “overly simplistic” way.
“The researcher in question has missed some vital paragraphs in this fairly short document which would have explained a lot of the stuff we have had to clarify.
“It does happen. It’s happened before, it will happen again with various data sets. People get the wrong handle and think the story is simpler than it actually is,” Mr Guthrie told AAP.
He said a factor that contributed to the misrepresentation was that men tended to be over-represented in fields such as engineering.
“In addition, some of the larger wage gaps are observed in fields with relatively low response numbers, for example dentistry and optometry, which could make them unreliable.”
The piece by Summers is wrong on so many counts, it is embarrassing. She praises the decision to increase the pay of community service workers, which is completely unaffordable, even though virtually all of these service workers are women and the rationale for increasing their pay could not be sustained on ‘gender grounds’.
What Summers does not seem to understand is that the pay for a job is the same whether the successful canditate is a female or a male. This is completely consistent with differences in average pay between women and men. Women, for instance, are more likely to work in the public sector where there is a trade off for lower pay in exchange for job security.
One of the first actions of a Coalition goverment should be to abolish the ridiculous sounding and pointless WGEA.
Isn’t she one of our most influential women? In fact, she was on that list for which even Gina Rinehart was considered to inconsequential so she must be a giant.
Is it just me, or does she look to others like she wears a wax mask that exposed to strong heat?
Toiling Mass
5 Jan 13 at 12:48 pm
There is a terrible sex discrimination in the incomes of leading mining executives.
The only way to resolve this is to pay other leading mining executives the same quantum is Gina Reinhardt
Rodney
5 Jan 13 at 12:48 pm
wax mask that was exposed to strong heat
Toiling Mass
5 Jan 13 at 12:54 pm
Most of the dentists I’ve known are self employed and run their own clinic. I can recommend “Gentle Dental” in Richmond (NSW) who did a very nice filling for me. Yes it was a woman who did the work, and the reason I went there is I heard it was good value.
Are they intending to lay charges against the male dentists for charging too much, or against the female dentists for not charging enough?
Tel
5 Jan 13 at 12:57 pm
The bizarrely florid mouthed Ms Summers will only be content when a far greater number of women are out of work. Oh, the nobility of unemployment.
Ms Summers has no idea about money, not having come from a background of having or creating wealth, but more of an urchin let loose in a lolly shop. Now she demands more lollies be placed in the jars. By others.
Such is the sense of entitlement by the covetous and mendicant. And no doubt the Chip off the old block.
James of the Glens
5 Jan 13 at 1:15 pm
Isn’t it funny that we never hear about the gender in equalities that favour women:
-Mental patients are overwhelmingly male.
-Homeless are over 80% male.
-Women win custody and get parent pension for more than males.
-Far more men are incarcerated than males.
-Men are worse drivers than females.
-As the majority, its impossible to descriminate against white men, because any descrimination to achieve ‘equality’ is legal under the current anti descrimination acts.
I call for all men to get compensation against such outrageous inequalities, after all most are based on our biological differences, so its only fair we get compensation for being unlucky enough to be born a male.
mundi
5 Jan 13 at 1:16 pm
God, is Paul Keating’s charwoman raving on about this again?
C.L.
5 Jan 13 at 1:20 pm
Wait ’till The Bunyip reads this he’ll have a few choice things to say
Tal
5 Jan 13 at 1:27 pm
You’re quite right about that, Tal. I was just about to post on the topic when I saw Judith has said everything I intended to say, but better. But there is one thing worth mentioning.
The 2012 Graduate salary survey is here, and if you go by the numbers there is a clear case of sexist discrimination:
Of those surveyed, female grads outnumbered males by 7,848 to 4,911. Clearly, gender equity legislation is needed to boost the number of XY grads. Expect Summers to be on the case without delay.
The figures for salaries are to be found in Table 3 at the above link. It makes interesting reading.
Bunyip
5 Jan 13 at 1:45 pm
I just do not believe there is a measurable difference. Any employer who can get the same productivity for a lower price will hire a women over a man. The profit motive is amoral. Competition ensures this, unless of course the main offender is government…..
anonandon
5 Jan 13 at 2:07 pm
Surely there must be an overseas university crying out for Ann Summers industrial strength stupidity?
H B Bear
5 Jan 13 at 2:15 pm
Elvis would now have to sing:
Simple get on the Emily list.
stackja
5 Jan 13 at 3:05 pm
Currently in most Year 12 results that have come out, the girls are achieving higher averages than the boys and the ratio of girls to boys achieving the highest possible score this year for the ATAR is 2:1. Past year it has been similar. We also know that many more girls are going to university and are graduating. Imagine if the statistic was the other way around. Do you think there would be a greater reaction to this imbalance, the same reaction or a smaller reaction? I personally think that there would be a greater reaction to this injustice. This leads me to the point about the pay gap. I think there are some prejudices in our society against a) successful and people who are b) white males because those two groups are seen as the people that are not discriminated against or disadvantaged so automatically we point the blame on them. The woman that spoke from the Gender Pay Group on 7:30 report last night seemed to imply that white men at these businesses set a bad culture and are the one’s to blame for these issues.
Andrew
5 Jan 13 at 3:21 pm
What I was basically trying to say that female issues are often given more attention in society than to male issues because of underlying prejudices and the view that because males, especially white males, don’t experience discrimination in society so it is alright to ignore any issues they have.
Andrew
5 Jan 13 at 3:28 pm
The left aren’t much good at numbers – they’re more into story-telling. Just look at the Commonwealth government budget….
MACK1
5 Jan 13 at 3:30 pm
Sorry to post three times in a row but the final line of Judith’s article is to ask Tony Abbott, the misogynist, to scrap a feminazi group like the WGEA. Just imagine the screeches from the media and the handbag hit squad on this issue.
Andrew
5 Jan 13 at 3:32 pm
Two points – firstly, the ABC, as usual, gave this story full and uncritical coverage across their taxpayer funded platforms the other day, all day. I heard it one the radio on the way to work and they were still meep-meeping away that night on the news and 7.30 report. Brown’s brown-nosing was despicable. They are so predictable, so unworthy.
Secondly, when someone like Gina Rhinehart earns heaps they don’t like it. She’s a bete noir, to be ridiculed and devalued at every turn. So tribal.
blogstrop
5 Jan 13 at 3:49 pm
This is interesting after the post about absolute and relative poverty.
Some people in Australia only earn 2.49 million rather than 3.78 million? This makes Anne Summers furious? This is a progressive cause?
I’m sure your average Zimbabwean would be happy to lend support to Summers’ campaign. We demand more foie gras for Australian university graduates now!
James In Footscray
5 Jan 13 at 4:08 pm
blog
The ABC’s coverage, as usual, was appalling.
On the report that I saw, they partly gave the game away when they reported some of the concerns the GCA had on their data, but managed to brush them aside and make it sound like the GCA was supporting further research.
It did provide a perfect teaching opportunity for my daughter when it was pointed out to her that it is illegal to pay men and woman different amounts for doing the same job. She couldn’t understand why the ABC didn’t report that. She is starting to understand why you should never, ever, trust anything you hear or see on their ABC.
johno
5 Jan 13 at 5:04 pm
I wonder how much Ann Summers earns?
NoFixedAddress
5 Jan 13 at 5:23 pm
And I mean the Australian Ann Summers not the UK Ann Summers
NoFixedAddress
5 Jan 13 at 5:25 pm
Oh the humanity!
This irretrievably misogynist country, with female;
Head of state,
Viceroy,
Prime Minister (selected)
Attourney General
Finance minister
Etc…
Forester
5 Jan 13 at 5:28 pm
Despite the error in the report, gillard’s onto the case faster than a misogynist accusation leveled at Abbott:
Obama had better watch out next time he meets up with gillard – no, not for that – as female staff in the White House are paid less than their male (obligatory feminist *spit*) counterparts.
Gab
5 Jan 13 at 6:04 pm
Usually the ardent feminists are people who would be of no consequence in any other field. It is easy shriek and moan and do simplistic interpretations of figures they do not understand.
Billy the Kidder
5 Jan 13 at 6:33 pm
Sorry. Not true.
ABS figures for May 2012 show that full-time adult ordinary time earnings in the public sector are almost $125.00 greater than in the private sector ($1,450.80 vs. $1,326.00). Last time I looked, about a year ago, the differential was only $100 so the public sector is doing very well indeed.
In the public sector male ordinary time earnings are $205 greater than for females ($1,554.80 vs. $1,349.80). Total male earnings includes another $73.70 whereas total female earnings includes only another $19.90 so, obviously, female public servants are not doing as much overtime as males.
In the private sector male ordinary time earnings are $296.90 greater than for females ($1,422.80 vs. $1,125.90). Total male earnings includes another $95.10 whereas total female earnings includes only another $16.90 so, again, in the private sector women are not doing as much overtime as men are.
Let’s see. Women earn less. Women do less overtime. Maybe this has something to do with the ordinary trajectory of most women’s lives (certainly most older women’s lives) and nothing at all to do with sexism, misogyny or the other usual explanations put forward by the misandrists of Emily’s List and elsewhere.
jrm
5 Jan 13 at 8:06 pm
Pretty comprehensive list here of current solecisms about “gender-biased” incomes.
First objection: there is equal pay. It’s illegal to give a woman less than a man for the same work. There are laws, unions, tribunals etc. policing this. So the argument is far-fetched to start with.
Then break it down into public and private sector employment. In the first, salaries are fixed, so there can be no question of paying different amounts to males and females. In the second, people are either self-employed, i.e. they charge what they think is the right fee, or they are employed by a company that would go out of business if it favoured men (or any other group) and paid them more to do the same work. So again, logic says there can be very little gender bias in incomes.
Yet the figures quoted show some differences. Why? The obvious answer is that there are gender biases in people. Males and females have somewhat different priorities, and these show up in the jobs they take and how many hours they spend at them. More women work part-time, or in jobs where they can determine their own hours. They seek out posts where they could take time out to have children, and especially those where they would get paid leave to do so.
It’s hard to adjust for these factors, but there is one simple test, namely comparing the incomes of all people who have never had children. Then men and women come out the same. Again, no evidence of gender bias.
So if there is nothing behind this, what motivates the whingeing about it, backed up by taxpayer-funded institutions? Self-interest would seem to be a prime candidate, given the profile of the whingers. A secondary motive, harder to verify, seems to be resentment and rejection of the persistent differences in life choices between men and women, and a concomitant desire to “explain” this as merely a reaction to discrimination.
David Brewer
5 Jan 13 at 8:15 pm
@David Brewer
self serving make work gender bias would seem to fit the bill.
NoFixedAddress
5 Jan 13 at 11:18 pm
‘No Fixed Address’ asks: “I wonder how much Ann Summers earns?”
From the drivel that she writes, I suspect that she earns about one hundredth as much as she gets.
Up The Workers!
6 Jan 13 at 6:17 am
The ABC coverage the other day on this was uncritical even in the face of the spokeswoman’s acknowledgement the data was not good. My flag went up straight away. So you are releasing a report with a message of inequality but the data is dodgy!
Captain Queeg
6 Jan 13 at 7:24 am
With a budget of $8.5 million and some 38 staff this negative value-added agency is a prime target for cost savings. Gillard will probably up its budgeting the pretext of ensuring against further errors
Alan Moran
6 Jan 13 at 8:17 am
WTF????
Dan
6 Jan 13 at 8:58 am
The Cammeraygal clan of the Gu-ring-gai people are the traditional owners of the land on which our office is situated.
Dan
6 Jan 13 at 9:11 am
That may have been true in 1980 Judith, but average PS wages have exceeded average private wages since then, and the evidence is strong that the lower echelons of the public sector are grossly overpaid by comparison to private sector counterparts.
As an example, you can earn 93K gross working as an envelope stuffer in one agency (which shall remain nameless).
When you include noncash benefits it’s no contest for people earning under 100K.
jasbo
6 Jan 13 at 10:00 am
Hi Judith – this is one that’ll curdle your brain…
OK. Here is proof – and from the WGEA itself – that it is a useless waste of taxpayers’ money.
How many companies do you think are listed as non-complaint with the WGE Act? After all, there is all that misogyny out there and all. All those women being discriminated against at the highest echelons?
The answer is from the WGEA itself.
Check it out. It’s awesome.
Jack Lacton
6 Jan 13 at 12:18 pm
about 60% of university graduates are women. is this a gender gap?
Jim Rose
8 Jan 13 at 12:29 pm
If 60% of graduates are women, how much higher would that number be without the gender gap in pay?
Lower labour market rewards for female graduates should lower their initial level of investment in higher education?
Jim Rose
8 Jan 13 at 12:34 pm
We’re just about to start the induction/training program for the grads we recruited from last year. This program is for entry-level “Analyst” positions, which most wet-behind-the-ears grads start.
55% are women, and 45% men. They all start on the same salary to the cent. Exactly the same healthcare plan, exactly the same entitlements to sick leave, vacation, etc. They all know they will be reviewed every 6 months for the next two years, at which point, they are promoted to the next level, go off to graduate school (MBA, or whatever they want), or they/we decide this job is not for them, whereupon we give them six months to “transition out” of the firm. At each 6 month level we roughly put them into three bands, which provide 10/15/20% salary increases. Annual bonuses at that level tend to be exactly the same, based more on firm-wide performance. At higher levels than ‘Analyst’, those annual bonuses become more individual. All this of course assumes they do not leave or get fired during the first 2 years (usually for gross misconduct; we are very reluctant to abandon our considerable investment in recruiting and training these kids during the first 2 years when many are still learning how to tie a tie!).
This year, there was one exception. We paid one of them about 15% more than all the others – a young woman. Why? Not only did she an honours degree in Finance/Accounting, she also had a one year Masters, and worked part-time as an RA for one of the finance academics. Basically, from day one. she will be be able to build 3-D Visual Basic valuation models, and turn them into neat presentations for her bosses, while some of her fellow trainees won’t have got much further than being able to call up the Excel program. The training program brings them all up to speed very quickly. This particular young woman’s head-start will probably not last for long.
While the young graduates have a wide range of skills from engineering to Law to humanities, she specifically made a case (negotiated) why her circumstances were exceptional. She did so in such way that impressed us so much, we gave her 5% more than she asked for.
The idea that companies deliberately pay women less than men for the same work is a complete and utter fantasy, which shows complete ignorance about how modern corporations work.
Who do they interview for these “studies”?
linecall
8 Jan 13 at 12:54 pm
Lower pay? Just read Table 3 in bunyip’s linked report. Public service salaries are higher for just about every single degree-requiring job.
linecall
8 Jan 13 at 1:41 pm
It seems that Ms. Summers is so horrified by the sexism/misogyny/whatever toward Peta Credlin on Twitter, that Ms. Summers thinks the right thing to do is splash the offending material across the pages of the ABC, where it can be seen by millions, instead of the 100s who would have seen it on Twitter. Sisters are doing it for themselves, indeed, when it comes to the Dowager Summers.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4455364.html
linecall
8 Jan 13 at 3:52 pm