The age when pay equality for women gets much worse

Pay imbalances accelerate for Australian women once they hit their mid-30s, as a landmark report shows the country has made scant progress on workplace gender equality in the last decade.

An index developed by researchers at Sydney University shows women were still more likely to carry a bigger domestic work load and to be working below their skill level, despite the figures showing a 3-point improvement in the index from 2014 to 2024.

On its scale from 0 to 100 (with 100 indicating total equality), Australia was still 17 points away from achieving perfect gender equality at work. It is the first comprehensive, national snapshot of the problem over a period of 10 years – and the first of its kind globally.

The research team, led by professors Elizabeth Hill and Rae Cooper, gave Australia a score of 92 for gender equality in hourly pay. But because men earn higher bonuses and overtime, “women make 76 cents for every dollar men make”, they found.

Separate research released on Friday by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency revealed the gender pay gap starts when people are in their 20s, accelerates a decade later, and peaks at nearly $53,000 a year between the ages of 55 and 59.

The agency report said the gap in earnings grows most rapidly at age 34, a “key turning point” from which the number of women working part-time begins to peak, just as more manager roles become available.

“From age 34, a manager is more likely to be a man,” the report said, with people most commonly having children between the ages of 30 and 34 and mothers more likely than fathers to give up their full-time employment to look after children because they are more likely to be earning less.

“Adding the earnings difference for every age from 15 to 67, women earn, on average, about $1.5 million less than men.”

The new index also looked at six other areas, including participation in work, working hours and parental leave uptake.

The index identified that women were more likely to be working below their skills level and less likely to be in a top job. For every eight men overqualified for their job, there are 10 women in the same situation.

Women dominated lower-income level occupations, but the inequality also worsened as they move up the career ladder. “Despite rapid improvement ... there is just one female CEO for every 3 male CEOs,” the researchers said, with women who do become chief executives $158,632 less than men at the same level.

Some key industries and occupations also remained “deeply divided along gender lines”, according to Hill, with care work dominated by women and sectors such as engineering dominated by men. This issue, known as “segmentation”, was the area Australia scored the lowest on at 67.

Hill said male-dominated occupations paid 16 per cent more on average than female-dominated ones.

“Having industries dominated by one gender exposes employers to chronic skills shortages,” she said. “The more an industry is dominated by one gender, the more likely it is to face workforce gaps because they’re not drawing on the full pool of talent available.”

The index also highlighted the fact that women continue to carry more of the domestic load and take more parental leave, as well as the higher levels of harassment they face in the workforce.

While men are taking on more domestic work, the researchers noted “persistent differences” in unpaid workload between women and men.

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