{"id":28536,"date":"2024-08-19T02:25:44","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T02:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=28536"},"modified":"2024-08-19T02:25:44","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T02:25:44","slug":"50-days-of-free-labour-a-bad-deal-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2024\/08\/19\/50-days-of-free-labour-a-bad-deal-for-women\/","title":{"rendered":"50 days of free labour, a bad deal for women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Equal Pay Day <\/a>this year, women will have worked an extra 50 days, on average, to earn the same as men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current national gender pay gap is 12 per cent, meaning women are paid an average of 12 cents less for every $1 a man makes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this is a small improvement from last year, it will come of little comfort to working women seeing more of their salaries eaten up by the spiralling costs of housing, groceries and other essentials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Larissa Waters, Greens Leader in the Senate and spokesperson on Women<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday marks the 50 extra days women need to work, on average, to earn the equivalent salary to men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWomen\u2019s work is still undervalued, whether it\u2019s paid or unpaid. Professions that are female dominated are on average paid less than male-dominated professions – despite being crucial to the functioning of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe easiest way to close the gender pay gap is to pay women more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Greens repeat our calls for the government to legislate for above-average wage increases over 10 years in women-dominated industries. That would see women paid fairly, boost women\u2019s economic security, and importantly ensure we can attract and retain staff in these critical sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Government has recently announced it would increase early childhood workers\u2019 pay, but not by the amount they asked for, despite these workers being chronically underpaid and starting to leave the sector as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTeachers, nurses, cleaners – all are female-dominated industries that are critical to society functioning but workers are leaving those industries because they are not being paid enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe national gender pay gap is now at 12 per cent, and while this is a small improvement on last year, that will be small comfort for women working 50 days for free and wondering why there is any gender pay gap in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe gender pay gap leads to a gap in retirement income, with women retiring into poverty after a lifetime of care and underpaid work. We know the fastest growing cohort of homelessness is women over 55.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis year we saw WGEA provide employer-level data on the gender pay gap for the first time, a win for the Greens and advocates who have long-called for this to be made public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWaiting 50 more years for pay equity is not a fair deal for women – we need the government to prioritise paying women fairly in what is already a cost of living crisis.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Equal Pay Day this year, women will have worked an extra 50 days, on average, to earn the same as men.  The current national gender pay gap is 12 per cent, meaning women are paid an average of 12 cents less for every $1 a man makes.  While this is a small improvement from last year, … Continue reading “50 days of free labour, a bad deal for women”<\/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-28536","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\/28536","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=28536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28537,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28536\/revisions\/28537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}