Ecologically Sustainable Development

Are We Sustaining Australia? Report Against Headline Sustainabilty Indicators

Environment Australia, 2002
ISBN 0 642 54771 8

Value 13: Gender and Economic Equity

Rationale for inclusion of issue

Historically, women have been disadvantaged in terms of workforce participation and earnings. Enhancing intra-generational equity should include redressing this inequity.

Indicator 15

Rationale for selection of indicator

An increase in average weekly earnings (AWE) of female employees as a proportion of average weekly earnings for males would be indicative of increasing economic gender equity, and could be indicative of increasing overall gender equity. In an equitable situation, average weekly earnings of female employees would be the same as average weekly earnings for male employees.

Full time ordinary time AWE has been selected because it minimises the impact of choice (eg working part time, or working overtime) on the indicator and reflects both the impact of different pay scales for "men's" and "women's" work and the impact of different levels of earnings attainment where men and women are in the same occupation (ie should either of these factors change for the better, the resulting headline figure should also change for the better).

To give the full picture of women's economic well-being relative to men's economic well-being, this indicator should be read in conjunction with women's workforce participation rates.

Explanatory and elaborative information

The headline indicator of 84.85% is based on the seasonally adjusted figure at February 2001, and shows that, in comparable situations, women are still generally earning considerably less than men. Comparable figures on seasonally adjusted AWE in 1999 and 2000 show very little change during this period.

The following table provides time series data which is not seasonally adjusted (indicating lower earnings for both males and females) as this allows use of a longer time series. It shows that AWE for full-time (ordinary time) adult female employees has remained at 83-84% of AWE for adult full-time (ordinary time) male employees for the last six years. AWE for all female employees as a proportion of AWE for all employees has also remained about the same, varying between 65% and 67%.

Source: ABS Cat No 6302.0 Average Weekly Earnings

Supplementary indicators

• Women's workforce participation rates.