The Workplace Gender Equality Agency once again 'finds' wage discrimination without evidence

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has once again appeared to 'find' wage discrimination without supporting evidence. We have covered this issue previously here.

Thankfully this time around Graduate Careers Australia, the research body that each year compiles statistics on the starting salaries of university graduates, has spoken up about the distortion of its research by the WGEA (see SMH story below).

The myth that women are paid less than men for the same work is so entrenched in our culture that we regularly have to challenge media reports that promote it.

A recent example is Stephanie Peatling's article titled "Equality? The 64-day question" in the Sun Herald on September 2nd 2012. In this article she incorrectly claimed that, "On average, men earn 17.5 per cent more than women in comparable jobs."

After a letter to the editor went unpublished we complained to the Australian Press Council which resulted in a prominent correction (page 2) being published in the October 28th edition of the paper and on the Sun Herald website.

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The 'wage gap' myth rears its ugly head once again - update

The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) has issued a media release claiming that Australian workplaces discriminate against women because of an average gender wage difference between male and female graduates of $2,000. The source data cited actually found this difference was not due to discrimination but due to the fields of study chosen by males and females, along with other factors such as hours worked and type and location of employer.

Here is a copy of the media release along with our letter to the director of the EOWA in response.

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TIME Cover Story: Why Men and Women Should End the Chore Wars (USA)

Big news, ladies! Turns out your husbands haven’t been slackers all along.

TIME’s cover story this week (available here for subscribers) examines the “Chore Wars” that take place in most modern marriages, where women have long felt the burden of being overworked. Ever since women entered the workforce en masse in the 1970s, they’ve felt the pressures of paid work on top of their pressures of unpaid work such as chores around the house and childcare. Their husbands, by contrast, seemed to move at a glacial pace to increase their fair share. This pressure on working women has caused, NewsFeed imagines, many a marital spat.

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Feminism? Forget it, sisters (UK)

The long night of modern feminism might be about to end. A glimmer of light is flickering in the encircling gloom.

A study published this week by Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics has found that men do slightly more work than the women they live with when employment and domestic work are measured together.

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Gail Kelly, Westpac CEO, busts the pay gap myth [YouTube]

On ABC TV's Q & A program on 7th March 2011, Mark Pannowitz, a Westpac employee, asked the following question of his CEO Gail Kelly. "Currently there is a 27 per cent pay difference between males and females in the finance sector. How is Westpac, planning to address this issue?". Gail's response - that despite equal pay for equal work being completely entrenched at Wespac, there is still a gender pay gap - shows that the pay gap is caused by the work/life choices of male and female employees, not any mythical male conspiracy to pay women less for the same work.

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