TAYLAH STRANO, HOST: Okay, Katy, the report gets popped onto your desk. What's your initial reaction to the findings?
KATY GALLAGHER, MINSTER FOR WOMEN: So initially, I guess, positive, because it is all moving in the right direction. But there's an element of frustration too, I have to be honest, that we're not moving faster than we would have hoped.
The gender pay gap is continuing to trend down, but in many industries it's still enormous. And for areas and jobs where you get paid bonuses, that seems to now be the area we need to focus on. So it's not your base rate, it's all the things that you get on top of that. Still a lot of work to do.
STRANO: When you say there are some typical industries where we're more likely to see that gap, what are they?
GALLAGHER: It's areas like finance and other traditionally male areas. Finance certainly stands out, but areas like construction, engineering, all of those traditionally male areas continue to have a gender pay gap that's much larger than we would like.
STRANO: Whose responsibility is it then to close the gap?
GALLAGHER: I think primarily the employer. This is our third report, so we've been watching it now for a couple of years, and there's no doubt that shining a light and having transparency about what's happening in individual employers is helping. Because we're seeing that more employers are doing gender analysis about what's going on, and we are seeing gradual improvements in some areas.
So it's primarily the employer. It's up to them, but there's also a broader responsibility to try to shift the gender-segregated nature of our labour markets. It’s so segregated here based on gender, much more so than in many other countries and that's something I feel is the government's responsibility, because it comes down to training, access to skills, and access to choices.
We know that girls, at primary school, are making decisions about which jobs are right for them, and we've got to deal with that as well.
STRANO: What does that reasonably and feasibly look like from a government standpoint? Is that policy intervention? Where do you track that?
GALLAGHER: It's a couple of things. One is about attitudes, about what job is for women and what job is for men, or boys and girls, and they're making those choices in primary school. So how we intervene there, but also how we make sure that training opportunities, whether through apprenticeships or other TAFE programs, are encouraging women into jobs that have traditionally been seen as off-limits.
Part of that is making sure the culture in those workplaces is right, because for many women they'll look at something and think, that's not for me, because either the culture is wrong or the infrastructure isn't there. It hasn't been that long since women's toilets weren’t on construction sites. Obviously that's a fundamental need if you're going to get more women into those jobs.
With all of these issues, when you see structural inequality, you're going to have to come at it from a number of different ways.
STRANO: I think the cultural aspect is a really big one. But there are always going to be people who say, well, women don't want to be sparkies and brickies, and men don't want to be nurses or in caregiving roles. Why is it important then that we do change that conversation? Who benefits when we close the pay gap?
GALLAGHER: We know all the data is in, where you have a gender-equal organisation, whether that be at your board level or across employees, that you perform better. It brings a range of skills and capabilities to the table that you don't have if you don't have a good balance between men and women.
For us in government, we watch all of these things carefully. All we’re about is making sure people have choices available to them. We've seen, for example, in aged care, and that is predominantly women and in fact it has got worse over the last five years. The minute the pay increase came in, where aged care workers were given a 25 per cent pay increase, we saw much more men entering that industry.
So you can see, good pay, good facilities and good infrastructure that meet the needs of men and women in the workplace, people will make the choice.
STRANO: You mentioned before that some of these bonuses are a contributing factor to the pay gap. We know superannuation has been well known for a long time, but when it comes to things like bonuses and overtime, the gap blows out to nearly 30 per cent. Why is that, and how do you fix it?
GALLAGHER: Good big pick-up there in the report because it jumped out at me. When we see the gender pay gap coming down, more employers are in the zone that we want them to be in, more employers are doing gender analysis, reports to boards is working. So all the things we've put in place are working.
Then this hits you in the face and you think there's something going on there. We'll need to do more work to understand it. But where there are bonuses being paid or payments outside standard remuneration, that's clearly an area where men are doing a lot better.
It may be that they are more prevalent in those industries which are male-dominated, I'm sure that's part of the reason, but that doesn't excuse it. This is why we banned pay secrecy clauses and things like that, because we know from all the data that where you have these secret arrangements or arrangements that don’t like to the awards or the EBA, that men tend to do a lot better than women.
STRANO: So it's a lazy argument, then to say that, well, women don't want to put themselves up for promotion. Women don't feel like they should put themselves forward and go for those bigger paying jobs, right?
GALLAGHER: Yeah, I think that's got nothing to do with it. I would think in those industries, particularly in finance, where there are a lot of these kind of arrangements that it's linked to the level of men, often in more senior jobs and in those highly segregated workplaces.
STRANO: So this is the third pay gap report that will be published. What's the response like from employers? Because everyone likes to think they're doing the right thing, but then when you put it on paper, that's not always the story that's told.
GALLAGHER: This has been really instructive to me. I knew it would change things, but I didn't think it would get as much scrutiny as it has. I certainly deal with a lot of employers, big employers, and I know that this has changed the way they think about these things. Because how can you not? When you're when everything else is taken away, and your name on your company's there, and your gender pay gaps reported, there isn't really anywhere to hide.
And so I think it has changed the kind of the way that senior management think about these things. We're seeing that in the data heading the right way. But there is a lot more I think we need to do, and we just want to see more progress than one per cent a year.
STRANO: I think it's important that I say right now I checked what Mamamia’s gender pay gap is, we're doing very healthy. It might have something to do with the 80% of women employees that we have. Last one for you Katy, the government says that large employers with over 500 staff will now need to meet gender equality targets. What could that actually look like in realistic terms?
GALLAGHER: Well, there's a fair bit of flexibility for employers in that category. So we are focusing on large employers, but based on whatever's happening in their workplace, reasonable and responsible targets to address the problems they have or the areas where inequality exists.
They are required to report to boards and have that discussion now. So this sort of takes the next step, like, we don't want to see coasting like ‘oh yeah, well, we sit just outside or just on the wrong side or the right side, and so that's enough’.
We want a lot of proactive energy coming into this from senior management. So they'll have flexibility to determine a target that's right for them, but we want to see effort made to shift the dial and to work towards meeting those targets.
Some people have said, ‘Oh, well, there's no punishment if they don't meet the targets’. But the idea is… it's a bit carrot and stick. Come on, work with us. We're publishing this data, so that's kind of the transparency frame, but now take your data and actually do something with it and try and make a difference, because it actually it's good for business. It's good for organisations.
I'm hopeful that we'll see employers leaning in on that side.