the gender pay gap as a living story
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency is preparing to release Australian employer gender pay gaps next week. As a result, the pay gap discussion is all over my LinkedIn feed at the moment.
This is awesome because the impact of the pay gap is significant and the systems and structures impacting women's ability to earn more are insidious. I say this because it’s me. It’s my story and the story of so many women I know.
See, I’m a solo mother of two kids, and it’s been this way for a good 7-8 years now. I also have primary care responsibilities. The kiddos were 6 and 4 when my marriage ended. I had gone back to work part-time and was doing the normal work-life juggle that all primary caregivers do. A juggle that is carried by women.
A PWC Women in Work report found that on average women spend 31 unpaid hours every week caring for children. That is 31 hours ON TOP OF their paid work roles. Now I’m too tired to research the stats properly, but I guess that the dominant demographic of that survey was two-parent households. So let’s add a whole lot more hours to that for solo mums. Another study has found that a lack of support for single mothers causes a serious amount of stress in the workplace. Substantially more than their coupled counterparts.
It’s no surprise that women are 3 times more likely to have part-time roles than men. How else are we supposed to keep all those balls in the air?
The rise of flexible working has been a godsend for working mothers (and women in general). So much so that WORK180 also showed recently that flexibility is one of the top 3 things that women look for in an employer. But the reality of flexible working for many is still a long way behind any optimistic rhetoric pitched in job ads. Its adoption is hindered by workplace culture, management skills and perceptions of performance. Flexible work may be a good way to manage caregiver responsibilities, but if it continues to hinder career growth, it isn't better for financial empowerment.
I worked part-time for as long as I could. However my career well and truly stagnated. As evidence shows, working part-time leads to fewer promotion opportunities. The work often carries less responsibility and is not readily available for leadership roles. This can mean limited career options. I went from earning six figures and managing a team and big budgets to less income, being in the same job for many years and no longer thriving at all. Side note, this wasn’t because the job itself was bad. But the opportunities that were offered to me because of my being part-time were the challenge.
I no longer fit. My skills, expertise, passions and soul were not only a match for the organisation, but they were not valued BY the organisation. When 'work' only looks one way, there's not a lot of space to change. My caring responsibilities hindered my ability to find something else. So after more than 15 years, I left my job.
Now why am I telling you this? Well, when I look around me I see a lot of single women, smart women who are just scraping by. Women who are incredibly professionally competent. Women who WANT to work and do great things. But instead, they are bound by fear, financial insecurity and dissatisfaction at work.
We were raised in a generation where we were told to ‘go to university, get the degree and a good job and you’ll be set’. But, as the article “Women, work and the poverty trap: Time for a fair go to support health and wellbeing for Australian women” states:
“Women face a cascade of gender-specific financial assaults across their lifetime, resulting in a reverse-wealth trajectory. The assaults are so deeply entrenched that more than a third of single women will live in poverty by the age of 60.”
This isn’t about capability. It’s not about education or willingness to work. It is about capitalist and workplace cultures that have penalised women for being a parent. It's going to take a fundamental shift in how we see work and productivity and what behaviours are inherently 'good' at work.
We need to do better.
Women in Work 2023 – Closing the Gender Pay Gap for good: A focus on the motherhood penalty PWC UK
(De Vaus et al 2015).The Australian Institute of Family Studies
de Vaus, D., Gray, M., Qu, L., & Stanton, D. (2015), The economic consequences of divorce in six OECD countries (Research Report No. 31), The Australian Institute of Family Studies
Workplace Gender Equality Agency | Unpaid care work and the labour market
Lin, V (2023) Economic impacts of divorce. ASX.
