{"id":275070,"date":"2010-02-04T01:07:37","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T06:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gordonmoyes.com\/2010\/02\/04\/report-highlights-widening-gender-pay-gap\/"},"modified":"2010-02-04T01:07:37","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T06:07:37","slug":"report-highlights-widening-gender-pay-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/275070","title":{"rendered":"Report highlights widening gender pay gap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>To address the pay equity gap in Australia for women, a report by the House of Representatives Employment and Workplace Relations Committee was tabled in Parliament on 23 November 2009. The report, <em>Making it Fair: Pay Equity and Associated Issues Related to Increasing Female Participation in the Workforce<\/em>, recommended a raft of amendments to the <em>Fair Work Act<\/em> and <em>Sex Discrimination Act<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/biblegateway.com\/bible?version=NIV&amp;passage=The+465\" title=\"Bible Gateway\">The 465<\/a>-page report makes 63 recommendations to the Federal Government following an extensive parliamentary inquiry into pay equity and associated issues related to increasing female participation in the workforce.<\/p>\n<p>Committee Chair Sharryn Jackson stated, &#8220;Australia needs to take a pro-active approach to address the gender pay gap. Increasing women&#8217;s participation in the workforce will lead to increases in productivity for the nation. How can Australia afford not to do it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, welcomed its release, saying it yet again highlighted the urgent and overdue need to close the growing gender pay gap. &#8220;One of the most important reforms proposed in this report is the elevation of the principle of equal pay for work of equal or comparable value from a &#8216;good to have&#8217; to an &#8216;unambiguous obligation&#8217;&#8221;, Commissioner Broderick said.<\/p>\n<p>According to Broderick, the report provided further evidence of the systemic and worsening nature of the problem in Australia. Commissioner Broderick stated, &#8220;It is refreshing to see this report recognise the gender pay gap as systemic gender discrimination that has lifelong impacts. At its core the gender pay gap is overt and direct sex discrimination.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Reforms proposed in the report calls for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Amending the <em>Fair Work Act 2009 <\/em>and sex discrimination legislation to make equal remuneration for men and women employees for work of equal or comparable value the explicit object of the legislation;<\/li>\n<li>The Federal Government elevating pay equity as a clear objective of modern awards;<\/li>\n<li>The Australian Industrial Relations Commission reporting to the Committee prior to the finalisation of the awards on how pay equity principles have been achieved;<\/li>\n<li>Amending the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 to make it mandatory for employers who are repeat offenders discriminating on the basis of pregnancy or carer&#8217;s responsibility to be required to attend counselling or an approved training course;<\/li>\n<li>Government leadership strategies including annual pay equity audit reporting for all government agencies;<\/li>\n<li>Minimising &#8216;red tape&#8217; for business;<\/li>\n<li>Establishment of a Pay Equity Unit with education, research and enforcement roles to focus approached to address the gender pay gap; and<\/li>\n<li>Removal of the exemption from the payment of the 9 per cent superannuation charge for employees who earn less than $450 per month.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To address the pay equity gap in Australia for women, a report by the House of Representatives Employment and Workplace Relations Committee was tabled in Parliament on 23 November 2009. The report, Making it Fair: Pay Equity and Associated Issues Related to Increasing Female Participation in the Workforce, recommended a raft of amendments to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}