Media release – Unions Tasmania, 19 August 2021
Unions Tasmania Women’s Conference
Almost 100 women from across the Tasmanian union movement will gather in Kingston tomorrow for Unions Tasmania’s annual Women’s Conference.
The conference is an opportunity to discuss the key issues facing working women and how they can be addressed. The conference will traverse subjects like pay equity, safety at work, job security, discrimination, superannuation, and early childhood education funding.
A key focus at this year’s conference will be equal pay. Yesterday, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) announced that Equal Pay Day for 2021 will fall on the 31st of August. Equal Pay Day marks the additional days from the end of the previous financial year that women must work, on average, to earn the same amount as men earned that year.
“A persistent gender pay gap has existed for decades in Australia. Yesterday we found out the national gap is 14.20%. That means Australian women must work an extra 61 days to receive the same pay as men. This gap hurts women financially throughout their working lives and then into retirement,” said Unions Tasmania Secretary, Jessica Munday.
“We shouldn’t still be talking about a gender pay gap today when equal pay legislation was put in place over 50 years ago. We know some of the key drivers of the gender pay gap include gender discrimination, occupational segregation, and time out of the workforce when caring for children or elderly relatives.”
“We can identify the barriers which means we can identify solutions. Unions play a critical role in winning positive industrial changes in workplaces – like increased workplace flexibility, improved parental leave, and pay transparency – that are critical to achieving equal pay in reality, not just on paper,” said Ms Munday.
