Work Gender Pay Gap

http://au.biz.yahoo.com/090830/31/28an8.html

Gender pay gap 'should be declared'

The Federal Government is being pressured to force companies to reveal how their pay rates for men and women compare.

The Equal Pay Alliance, comprising more than 130 business and community groups, has sent an open letter to Tanya Plibersek, the Minister for the Status of Women, demanding mandatory audits of pay rates.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions is among the letter's signatories and its president, Sharan Burrow, says Australia has a culture of discrimination which undervalues women's work.

"We'd like to see pay equity audits mandated so that there is a transparency [and] people know what the pay rates for grades right up to management are," she said.

She says it takes a woman 14 months on average to earn what a man earns in a year, and women retire with half the amount of savings.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, also a member of the alliance, says companies in the United Kingdom already reveal male and female pay rates in their annual reports.

"That is legislation that has only been brought in recently so there are different solutions which we might look to internationally," she said.

Marie Coleman, from the National Foundation for Australian Women, says the Federal Government should at least begin mandatory pay reporting in the public sector.

"They can certainly promote, in the private sector, more vigorous approaches towards equal pay and equal opportunity," she said.

"It would be perfectly possible for government contracts to only be available to businesses which could demonstrate that they had effective equal-opportunity and equal-pay strategies in place."