Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the first woman to represent the electorate of Dunkley, named after the formidable Louisa Dunkley, a campaigner and advocate for equal pay, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on women's equality in the workforce. We know that in Australia the gender pay gap is at a stubborn 14 per cent. Why does such a pay gap exist? It's a combination of a number of factors. One is gender patterns in industries of employment. We know that even in female dominated organisations and industries women earn about $15,000 a year less than their male colleagues. The second element is the concentration of men in senior roles. Men absolutely dominate senior roles. Female CEOs are only 37.6 per cent of all CEOs in female dominated industries, and in male dominated industries it's a paltry 6.3 per cent of CEOs who are female. We also know the third factor in the gender pay gap is a persistence of biases and barriers to women's career progression. For example, we know that women over 55 are often seen as losing their value in the workplace. Men who are about 55 and over have the greatest chance of becoming a CEO. Women who are over 55 have the same chance of becoming a CEO as a 24-year-old male.

Dr Leonora Risse from RMIT and the Harvard Kennedy School has written a terrific article in the BroadAgenda setting out some of the issues for the gender pay gap because of the COVID pandemic. She has argued that the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women means that we need to have a dashboard of multiple indicators to give us a full picture of the widening gaps between men's and women's workforce outcomes. In addition to the gender pay gap, we should look at the employment gap. As a result of the pandemic, there are 715,000 fewer jobs for women than men. We should look at the gap in the number of hours worked. Three months into the pandemic, 9.4 per cent of employed women were working zero hours. We should also look at the unemployment rate gap. It is still rising for women—it's gone beyond that of men—and is at 7½ per cent.

Dr Risse has also argued that we should look at the workforce participation gap. In May it had plunged for women to below 58 per cent, the lowest since 2007. In the blink of an eye, we've gone backwards 13 years. We should look at the caring and the cleaning gap. Women before the pandemic did more unpaid work in the household than men. It's now gone from 3½ hours more a week to five hours more a week. And we should look at the stress and safety gap. Women are more likely to be the frontline workers—the health, the aged-care, the teachers and the early education workers. What has this government—

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What has this government focused on for stimulation to get us out of the COVID period and the recession? Predominantly, investment in infrastructure and construction. While, in themselves, they are good ways of stimulating the economy, they certainly aren't industries that are benefiting women in the workplace. About 12 per cent of the construction industry are women, and there is no plan to increase that from the federal government. I'd like to shout out to women in construction, who are pushing hard for support for women to take up apprenticeships and work in the construction industry.

What else has this government done? The first and so far the only industry to lose JobKeeper is child care—early education and child care—comprised predominantly of women workers, and the early access superannuation scheme hurts women. Women, on average, have 40 per cent less superannuation than men on retirement as it is, without having to draw down on their superannuation early to get through the pandemic. Research says that women are accessing their superannuation early just to pay for basics to get through this current time because they are so badly affected.

We know that it's going to be a hard road ahead to get gender equality in the workplace, but there are solutions. As Dr Risse said, we can disaggregate statistics by gender to make it clear. We can have more women involved in developing policy. Governments can lead by example and employ more women. We can have companies being more transparent in their plans to close their gender pay gap and have women in leadership. We can have paternity leave for men.

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a government, we will continue to create, prioritise and back pathways towards a safe, secure, fair and equal status for women in our economy and our society. 'It's our stance, and it's my commitment,' said the Prime Minister on International Women's Day earlier this year. I thank the member for moving this motion because it gives me an opportunity to talk about an issue that is very important to me and one I'm passionate about.

Before coronavirus, there were more women in work than ever before, and the gender pay gap had closed to its lowest level on record. There was still a long way to go, and, after coronavirus, there will be more work to do. All of us have felt the effects of the virus. Families have been kept apart, and many have fallen into economic hardship. We've been there every step of the way, to support Australians to get through this and to get out the other side of coronavirus.

We do know that women are disproportionately affected. I've seen firsthand what can be accomplished when we tackle these economic challenges head on. In 2014, I led a think-tank program at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, the 21st Century Global Women's Initiative, which explored important issues around women in work, and, under Australia's presidency and leadership, the G20 leaders, in 2014, committed to women's workforce participation as a critical factor in breaking down social and economic barriers.

Our target set Australia to work towards reducing the gender gap in workforce participation by 25 per cent by 2025. Lifting women's workforce participation includes additional financial security for women and their families through higher lifetime earnings. It is true that we often see the effects of women not accumulating enough superannuation. I have seen, firsthand, where women are living and experiencing homelessness in older age. It's something that we do need to address as a society. We need to ensure that women do have increased savings for retirement.

Economic independence is absolutely critical for women as they age, and it also helps women assist themselves and their families leave domestic violence relationships. It provides financial security. It breaks intergenerational welfare, improves personal confidence and, ultimately, ensures safety. We know that we can get back on track after coronavirus and get back to the strong trend of supporting women's economic security. There are already signs that economic security is improving. Women's employment increased in June and July, as the economy has begun to reopen. Our $158.3 million women's economic security plan, first introduced in 2018, will be refreshed again this year to better target support for where it's needed most.

This package is delivering support for women entering the workforce, with grants to increase entrepreneurship opportunities as well as investing in the Career Revive initiative to help businesses attract and retain women returning to work. This plan also invests in the Academy for Enterprising Girls, to support and encourage more young women into science, technology, engineering and maths, or STEM. In my electorate of Lindsay there's no end to the opportunity that's coming, in regard to STEM, with Western Sydney airport and the aerotropolis precinct. It will be a hub for emerging industries, including advanced manufacturing, defence industry, agriculture, research and medicine. I'm very pleased that Sydney Science Park will be in the electorate of Lindsay.

We're backing established industries to take hold of these opportunities and get behind entrepreneurs and start-ups to create and sustain jobs. For young women in STEM, these opportunities will be there for the taking. I really want to encourage that. The average, for women's workforce participation in Western Sydney, last year was 63 per cent. It is higher than both the Australian and New South Wales averages but, when we're looking at the industries of the future—particularly in Western Sydney—women still only make up 43 per cent of science and technology, 28 per cent of manufacturing and 17 per cent of agriculture. So it is critical that we encourage more women into these roles, which will be key to getting to our full workforce potential. That's why it's so important to equip young women with the skills they need to take the jobs of the future.

From the Girls in STEM program at Jamieson High School and the robotics classes at Samuel Terry Public School to the Western Sydney Women aviation program, Western Sydney has the opportunity to pave the way for young women in these emerging industries.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's no secret that many Australians are doing it tough. We continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic while experiencing the effects of the first recession in three decades, all while there are still so many attempting to pick up the pieces from the unparalleled bushfire season and long drought before that. Sadly, the evidence clearly shows it is women that have been—and are being—disproportionately impacted by these disasters.

When we went into shutdown, over half a million Australians joined the unemployment line. Fifty-five per cent of those were women. The occupations most hit—accommodation, food services and retail—are highly casualised and predominantly filled by female workers. We must also recognise that it is Australian women who've been on the front line of the COVID-19 crisis in underpaid and undervalued roles. Women account for 87 per cent of registered nurses and midwives, 87 per cent of aged-care workers and 96 per cent of early childhood educators.

Recently, I heard from early childhood educators in my electorate about the stress they are under—not only because of the health impacts of caring for little people and their families, at this time, but also because of the financial impact of the government's free child care, which effectively destroyed their businesses by halving their income. To add insult to injury, it was this essential service that was the first to have JobKeeper withdrawn. This is even though these businesses were—and still are—struggling with the downturn of enrolments, and the extra cost of cleaning and sanitising to keep themselves, their staff and their children safe and well.

The statistics of the pandemic are truly alarming. It is estimated that some 70 per cent of healthcare workers are infected with COVID-19 in Victoria's second wave, and they were infected at work. Nurses make up 40 per cent of those workers and a further 40 per cent are in caged care, both sectors with a predominantly female workforce. While the official unemployment rate sits at 7.5 per cent, the rate of underemployment for women sits at an alarming 16 per cent.

The issues of unemployment and underemployment for women, from the current recession, will last for the rest of their lives. Women already typically retire with half the superannuation balance of men. I fear this statistic will worsen as a result of the government's ill-conceived early super release scheme. Worse still, in recent weeks we've seen the Liberal Party starting to lay the groundwork to peel back plans for increases to the superannuation rate.

To better bring light to these issues, last Friday was Equal Pay Day. This day marks the 59th additional day, on average, women work to earn the same amount as men in any given financial year—59 days. Put simply, it reflects a national gender pay gap of 14 per cent. That's a full-time average weekly earnings difference of $253.60 a week. In my home state of New South Wales the pay gap figure is higher, at 15.34 per cent. Sadly, that hasn't budged for some time.

Another indication emblematic of a Liberal government that doesn't get it after almost seven years in government is that last year the Treasurer claimed in question time that the gender pay gap had closed. Although I wish that was the case, wishing does not make it so, and these figures bear that assessment out. In June the minister representing the Minister for Women said during an MPI, 'What you hear from the opposition is a long, ongoing, bleak, dreary narrative about entrenched disadvantage. You know, it's just last century.' Well, I wish it were just last century.

The Prime Minister has promised an update of the government's women's economic security statement in June, and we're still waiting. Let's hope the next statement, unlike the 2018 one, has a plan to close the gender pay gap, a genuine reform agenda that tackles job losses in female dominated industries, the gender pay gap and the discrimination that underpins these issues; one with strategies that assist women to boost their super balances and embrace the magic of compound interest and set women up comfortably for retirement, not one of poverty and homelessness. But I fear, like so many other Australians, that working women are going to be left behind by this government. With 400,000 Australians set to lose their jobs between now and Christmas, many of them women, we really need action now.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.