{"id":13996,"date":"2021-11-24T08:10:43","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T08:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=13996"},"modified":"2021-11-24T08:10:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T08:10:43","slug":"greens-call-for-increase-in-wgeas-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/11\/24\/greens-call-for-increase-in-wgeas-powers\/","title":{"rendered":"Greens call for increase in WGEA\u2019s powers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Greens say the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) must be given more powers to tackle gender inequality in the workplace, including the ability to require organisations to report on the number of sexual harassment incidents reported by employees and how they were handled.<br \/>\nIn her submission to the review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act Senator Larissa Waters called for all public and private sector organisations with more than 50 workers to:<br \/>\n* provide details on the number of sexual harassment complaints made, the number of complaints resolved, disciplinary actions taken, and whether the employer uses non-disclosure agreements<br \/>\n* publish workplace pay data and remove employee pay gag clauses<br \/>\n* take meaningful action to reduce their gender pay gap or lose eligibility for government grants and contracts<br \/>\n* identify and address intersectional pay inequity experienced by First Nations women, culturally diverse women, LGBTIQ women, and women with disability<br \/>\n<strong>Greens deputy leader and spokesperson on women Senator Larissa Waters said:<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cOver the past decade WGEA has done important work to increase awareness, provide rigorous analysis of gender pay disparity in Australian workplaces, and to identify ways to close the gap.<br \/>\n\u201cBut the needle hasn\u2019t moved very much. In fact, during the pandemic the gender pay gap has actually grown and Australia has crashed to 50th in the World Economic Forum\u2019s Global Gender Gap Report rankings.<br \/>\n\u201cWGEA needs more power to hold employers to account and ensure that there are real consequences for non-compliance.<br \/>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not enough to simply have sexual harassment policies &#8211; employers should be able to show that those policies are actually working, which is why we\u2019ve called for employers to be required to report on the number of complaints and the actions taken.<br \/>\n\u201cThe lack of transparency around the gender pay gap and secrecy about salaries, bonuses and promotions disadvantage women in the workforce. Employer-level data must be made publicly available to shame poor performing employers, and there must be greater pay transparency so women can tell when they\u2019re being short-changed compared to their male colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Greens say the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) must be given more powers to tackle gender inequality in the workplace, including the ability to require organisations to report on the number of sexual harassment incidents reported by employees and how they were handled. In her submission to the review of the Workplace Gender Equality &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/11\/24\/greens-call-for-increase-in-wgeas-powers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Greens call for increase in WGEA\u2019s powers&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}