Important new research on women's wages and conditions
A comprehensive report on women’s position in the Australian workforce, Women’s Employment Status Key Indicators, was today released by the three commissioning organisations, the National Foundation of Australian Women (NFAW), the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL), and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Welcoming the report, prepared by researchers at the Curtin University of Technology in WA, Marie Coleman of NFAW said:
“Women’s participation in the workforce is at record levels but this report shows us that many women are still clustered in low pay areas (child care, retail, hospitality), dependant on awards, often working part-time, and tending to bargain off family-friendly conditions against cash-in hand. The report is also a forceful wake-up call to government agencies that if we are to understand what is happening to women as individual workplace agreements replace awards, especially the more vulnerable women such as sole parents and women with disabilities, we must change the type and frequency of current data collections.”
Congratulating the researchers on an excellent report, spokeswoman for the Women’s Electoral Lobby, Jenny Earle, said “It gives us a database from which we can develop benchmarks. It is a comprehensive national stock-take of available information on women’s pay and conditions, but it exposes significant gaps. For example, little of the information collected on agreement-making is disaggregated by gender. This is a major worry at a time of such radical changes to the way wages and conditions are set. It is especially important that we keep track of the gender pay gap as there is a real risk that it will widen under the new system. Equal pay for women and men is a pretty fundamental right.”
The WESKI report makes a number of recommendations to improve the capacity of government and non-government organisations to monitor women’s employment entitlements under the new regulations. The spokeswomen for NFAW and WEL said they would be pressing for a Government response to the report as soon as possible.
“This is about making and keeping the workplace family friendly, it is about ensuring that people who are finding it harder to get pensions because of changes to Government policies are treated fairly at work, it is about making sure that women who want and need to work to support their families are not being exploited,” they said.
The Report is available on www.nfaw.org
Background information
The consortium of over 60 national women’s organisations represented in the What Women Want Project has made a submission to the Australian Fair Pay Commission, based in part on earlier drafts of the WESKI report. That submission is available on www.nfaw.org, www.security4women.com, and on the Australian Fair Pay Commission web site.
NFAW, WEL and HREOC will now begin discussions as to means of implementing the recommendations of the WESKI Report, a summary of which is attached.
NFAW and its non-government research partners, now including the YWCA Australia and WEL next propose to commission a second phase study, on the impact of national regulatory changes on vulnerable workers. Mrs Coleman said ‘we understand that a number of State Governments have expressed interest in contributing to the costs of the second phase research, and we have made the WESKI Report available to them immediately.’
Further enquiries
Marie Coleman 041 4483067
Jenny Earle 0412 159901
Report Authors
Professor Alison Preston
Co Director
Women in Social & Economic Research
Curtin University of Technology
Ph 08 9266 7900
Email PrestonA@cbs.curtin.edu.au
Dr Therese Jefferson
Research Fellow
Women in Social & Economic Research
Curtin University of Technology
Ph 08 9266 3724 Email Therese.Jefferson@cbs.curtin.edu.au