Advertisement
Australia
This Week in AsiaEconomics

Australia closing in on gender pay parity but more work needed to empower women in Asia

  • Asia continues to have some of the widest gender pay gaps, with women facing deep-rooted obstacles to financial security or access to jobs
  • While efforts have been made to empower women in Australia, it is still behind neighbouring New Zealand, which has closed the pay gap to about 14 per cent

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
The Sydney central business district. A recent report by Australia’s workplace gender equality agency showed the median total pay gap in the country stands at 19 per cent. Photo: Shutterstock
Su-Lin Tanin Singapore
Australia’s latest reveal of its gender pay gaps show men continue to be paid roughly 20 per cent more than women, lagging behind gender pay parity efforts posted by New Zealand and other developed countries.
Advertisement

However, in the Asia-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand’s pay gaps are among the smallest, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Generally, Asia continues to have some of the widest gender pay gaps, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has found.

Women walk along a street in Dhurnal of Punjab province in Pakistan. Many women in Asia face difficulty in finding jobs and are likely to also be unpaid family workers, according to the International Labour Organization. Photo: AFP
Women walk along a street in Dhurnal of Punjab province in Pakistan. Many women in Asia face difficulty in finding jobs and are likely to also be unpaid family workers, according to the International Labour Organization. Photo: AFP
There were deep-rooted obstacles to women’s economic empowerment or access to jobs in Asia and parts of the Pacific and when women did find jobs, they tended to work in informal work arrangements or low-skilled sectors that paid poorly, it said.

Many women in the region are also likely to be unpaid family workers, according to the ILO.

Within informal work economies – of which there are plenty in Asia – an accurate gender pay gap is hard to measure, according to Elizabeth Hill, a political economy professor who co-leads the University of Sydney’s research into equal pay and the gender pay gap.

Advertisement

“[But] we do know that women are more likely than men to be employed in the informal economy and that wages in this part of the economy are on average much lower than those received from formal employment,” she said.

Advertisement