Female chartered accountants earn $60,000 less than their male colleagues, on average. Jo Cribb argues pay transparency legislation would go a long way to fixing gaping disparities like these
While we might be feeling smug that we are doing better at Covid containment than our Aussie mates, there is another thing we are beating them at. But it is not something to skite about.
We are better at paying women accountants less.
This month, the beans the professional body for accountants have been counting is their pay.
A key finding of the Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand’s 2021 Remuneration Report is that the female chartered accountants in New Zealand, on average, earn $60,000 less than their male colleagues. Australian women earn $50,000 less.
Regardless of hours worked, male chartered accountants earn an outrageous 40 to 50 percent more than women.
It is a fact. There is hard evidence in spreadsheets.
If you are a female chartered accountant, the hard evidence is in your pay slip. It's $1,154 less pay a week than your male colleagues, or 288 fewer coffees a week, or the weekly mortgage repayment for a million-dollar house.
It gets worse. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed for the report stated that they either didn’t think there was any gender differences in pay (28 percent) or they weren’t sure (27 percent).
This finding echoes my experience of working on these issues; denial or ignorance that women are paid less, regardless of hours worked, is real.
Deniers often start with blaming women for any differences in pay. Women either are working fewer hours because of childcare responsibilities or had a career break to have babies.
I could never work out how working 10 hours a week less or taking six months off made employees less valuable.
Maybe it’s actually because, chirp in the deniers, women just aren’t ambitious or competent enough for the well-paid roles.
I will just leave that there.
If I am being charitable, a naïve belief in meritocracy probably drives some ignorance. If your experience is that you are treated fairly, you might logically extrapolate that to every worker. And we like to think that we treat people fairly; that our employment and remuneration systems are robust and free from bias.
But most are not.
Anyone working part-time is likely to take a pay hit. Part-time state sector workers are paid 11.4 percent less than full-time workers on a full-time equivalent basis. Same job, probably same skills and experience, just fewer hours per week, and less pay.
Those 55 percent of people who don’t think women are paid less probably haven’t had a look in their organisations.
Because if they did run the numbers and found they were paying women less for doing a comparable job to men, they would then know they are in breach of pay equity legislation.
So not only unfair, but illegal.
If one is cynical, denial or pleading ignorance is a much cheaper business strategy.
Twenty-four percent of respondents in the accountants’ report agree with me about the best strategy to address the gender pay gap: pay transparency legislation. This would require all business of an agreed size to publish their gender and ethnic pay gaps.
Good businesses already know what their pay gaps are and will be consciously working to ensure they pay all their workers fairly.
Gender pay gap deniers and ignorers will be forced to have a look. Their employees, customers, investors, and watchdog agencies will be able to see too.
Here’s the kicker. Our Aussie mates already have such legislation in place and even a government agency to crank the numbers. Not surprisingly, this has made a significant impact in reducing the national and industry gender pay gaps.
Fair dinkum.
We should do this because it is right. We should also do it because paying our women less than men is not a Trans-Tasman competition we want to keep winning.
