She Works Hard For The Money - Australian Women and the Gender Divide

SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY

Australian women have achieved significant milestones over the past century but large gaps still remain between women and men in both paid and unpaid work, and areas of wealth, income and superannuation.

The 22nd AMP.NATSEM Income and Wealth Report found that over the past 20 years there has been increased pressure on women to balance work, motherhood, households and families.

While the participation of women in the workplace increased considerably during this time, up 10 per cent to 58.2 per cent in 2008, Australian women face an ever-increasing juggling act. While the gender gap has narrowed there is still much to be done.

This report focuses on women today and how their social and economic status has changed and evolved over time, and what differences can be seen between them and their male counterparts.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION

The report found that women have made great inroads toward achieving equal opportunity - high-school retention rates for women now outstrip men, women’s enrolment at university is higher than men’s and young women are now more likely than ever before to hold a post-school qualification than men. Over 50 per cent of women with a post-school qualification, aged 25 to 34 years hold a bachelor degree or higher, compared with around 43 per cent of men in the same age group.

The increase in women’s educational attainment is reflected in their greater presence in higher status occupations. Over the past 20 years women’s employment in professional occupations has increased by over 10 percentage points and they currently outnumber men, at 52.6 per cent.

EMPLOYMENT GAPS

While women’s participation in the workplace has risen, the women’s employment rate in Australia is still 19 per cent lower than men’s. And compared to other OECD countries with similar tertiary education levels, Australia has the fifth highest employment gap.

While the gap between the employment of women and men remains substantial some things have changed. Women now are more likely to be working in highly skilled occupations than ever before, 35 per cent of all employed women are employed as professionals and associate professionals compared with 29 per cent of men.

But despite this shift the report shows that men still dominate senior leadership positions.

DIVISION IN WAGES AND RETIREMENT

Despite major advances for women in the workforce there is still a significant wage gap for Australian women. In 2005-06 women possessed around 37 per cent of total Australian income, a slight improvement from 1982. Women are receiving less income than their male counterparts and men and women who share the same workforce skills are actually paid differently.

Not surprisingly the wage gap for Baby Boomer women is the highest of all generations, at over 13 per cent, Gen X women have a much lower wage gap of around 3.5 per cent and for Gen Y women it is just 0.6 per cent. The small gap for Gen Y women was not unexpected as they have exceeded their male counterparts in the educational and employment stakes, but this is likely to change as they start a family later in their working lives.

The report also looked at the superannuation gaps for men and women finding that while superannuation balances in the seven years from 2001 to 2007 have improved, overall men of all generations typically have larger superannuation balances compared with women. So while women’s superannuation balances have improved they are still not coming close to that of men.

Even for Gen Y, women are still behind men in accumulating superannuation, with 18 per cent of men having a super balance between $25,000 and $100,000, compared with only 14 per cent of women.

GAPS IN EXPECTED LIFETIME EARNINGS

The disparity between lifetime earnings between men and women in some circumstances is huge.

The report shows that a 25-year-old man is likely to earn a total of $2.4 million over the next 40 years, more than one-and-ahalf times the $1.5 million prospective earnings of a woman. Meanwhile men who hold a bachelor degree or higher and have children can expect to earn around $3.3 million over their working life, nearly double the amount for women in the same category at $1.8 million.

THE BALANCING ACT

The report findings highlight the challenge for women to maintain a “work life balance” and it found that women are still doing the majority of the child rearing and housework. Women with children employed full-time spend on average 78 hours a week in paid and unpaid work while full-time men with children spend only 74 hours a week. The differences can be found in the amount of time men pitch in to help with the kids and housework. Full-time women with children spend 15 hours per week doing the cooking and cleaning compared with only six hours per week for men.

For a part-time mother the reality is even harsher - a part-time woman averages 74 hours a week in paid and unpaid work, 23 hours are spent with the kids and 20 hours on the housework, while part-time men with children work 58 hours in paid and unpaid work, and 14 hours of that is spent with the kids and nine hours is dedicated to the housework.

So it’s little wonder really that the report found that half of employed women feel rushed or pressed for time compared with only a third of employed men.

WOMEN AND BABIES

Not surprisingly women are choosing education and career and then “maybe baby”, which has seen an increase in the age of first time mothers to 29. Fertility has declined considerably since the Baby Boomer generation, however, more recently there has been a slight improvement in total fertility - rising to 1.9 children in 2007 from 3.5 children per woman in the Baby Boomer generation.

Despite advances in equal opportunity in the workplace 22 per cent of pregnant working women said they faced a workplace difficulty in relation to their pregnancy and some said they had missed out on training, development and promotion.

The report found that once the baby is born women are taking all the paid leave available to them and they are even resorting to taking unpaid leave. Results show that over half of professional women took paid maternity leave compared with just eight per cent of elementary clerical, sales and services workers. And 76 per cent of public sector women having babies took paid maternity leave, in contrast to 25 per cent of women in the private sector.

CONCLUSION

It seems the catchphrase of the 21st century “balancing work and family” continues to ring true for Australian women today despite them achieving significant milestones over the past 100 years.

More women are participating in the workforce and the increase in women’s educational attainment is reflected in their increasing presence in higher status occupations but they are also increasingly juggling the responsibilities of work with child rearing and in most cases they are doing the lion’s share of the housework.

While large gaps still exist between women and men in both paid and unpaid work and areas of wealth, income and superannuation this report, gives some encouragement that inroads in the gender divide will continue to be made, with the wage gap results showing that Gen Y women are almost on par with Gen Y men. But the concern is that this closing of the gender divide could be lost when women enter their child rearing years.

So while progress has been made in some areas there is still more work to be done to narrow the gender divide particularly in the child rearing years, so that when women choose to re-enter the workforce they don’t fall behind their male counterparts.

Foreward written by Craig Meller, AMP Financial Services Managing Director. The report was published recently by AMP and the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) and can be downloaded from www.canberra.edu.au/centres/natsem.