Funding to boost female tradie numbers in Canberra

Some women in IT engineering would be nice too..wheres the equality? 🤔

Yes. Let’s magically fix every equality issue at once…

Michael Cruise yep, giving one gender ‘incentives’ to take up professions that they were not interested in doing in the first place, well that is just stats balancing to make a segment of the community feel ’empowered’.
Gender equality would be ensuring we have legislation that made it illegal to discriminate against someone based on their gender….oh hang on we have that, and have had it for decades.
Merit based employment should be encouraged, not gender based employment.

Steve Ulrich yet women still get regularly discriminated against and generally have lower pay than men doing the same job. It’s almost like we need to try something else because the existing stuff isn’t working…

Michael Cruise I think that this needs to be proven rather than just stated. I would also suggest that there is legislation well established that prevents one gender being paid more than another based on gender. Consider perhaps the issue may be that women make their own choices in employment, and some fields may not be as appealing to them as they are to males. As for child rearing, we have a billion dollar childcare industry that has been subsidised to the tune of billions of dollars each year for decades as well. Women make choices which influence their earning capacity, they are not forced into it.

It has been proven time and time again that women in the same job generally get less than men.

I’m not against merit based employment. Someone should be capable of doing a job to get it. And yes, there are fields that should encourage more men to work in it.

Also, the child rearing thing is BS. A man can equally choose to be a primary carer for a child.

I suggesting that its the choice that they are making is influencing pay levels, not based on gender. There is a difference. Is someone can prove to me that women are being deliberately being paid less based on their gender, Im interested to see it. I do not expect someone who chooses to take 6 years out of their life to care for a child to be paid as much as someone who has spent that 6 years in the workforce developing their skills and making achievements in the workplace.

Here’s what the Parliament had to say about it … https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1718/Quick_Guides/Wages

There are reasons behind it but there is a difference in the amount paid to men and women … like there is a difference between the average time taken off to have kids between men and women.

thanks. I cant see a comparison of hours worked and time spent in workforce etc. vs pay.

Discrimination is easy. You see a married woman of child bearing age and a man of the same age apply for a job with same experience and qualifications do you take the risk of hiring someone who might leave for having kids? Same again for people with kids. Mum is more likely to have the day off to be with sick kid or other things that cant be moved outside work hours….

Michael Cruise Can you please point me to this proof? I’m interested to see the figures.

Scott Applebee Andrew posted a link earlier.

Michael Cruise that link doesn’t make the statement that women get less per men per hour, it states that because of the way women work, the under representation of them at high levels (and implies their personal circumstances like taking more time off than men for child rearing) they on average get less. This isn’t the same… as other people have stated I would love to see an example where a women is getting paid less than a man with the same experience and skill level for the same work (and if they are I’d definitely be angry and wanting it fixed). The question is do we want equality (everyone getting paid the same based on their experience and skill set) or equity (everyone getting the same wage, even if they aren’t as skilled or working as many hours as some of their counterparts).

Craig Tregear you wont find that mate…its against the law. All these statements about women earning less are NEVER about less pay for same work…but talk about career averages and so on.

Except that there is lots of evidence in the private sector that shows men make more than women for doing the same job. Many times when a person can negotiate their rate men make than women. The most commonly found evidence is around the perception of women as pushy or overbearing when they ask for more money whilst a male is viewed as a go-getter etc. In the public sector there is a huge discrepancy in the number of males vs. females I management roles. This is especially true in the education sector. There is also no difference in the number of male vs. female secondary teachers in the ACT, there is more male college teachers than female. The HUGE gap is in the primary sector. Surprise, surprise the sector of education that is most dominated by females is…… wait for it…… the lowest paid of all the educational sectors.

Stacey Griffiths with those points though you have to be careful as correlation does not imply causation. If those points are true and there are more women in primary teaching which pays less but an equal amount in secondary that doesn’t mean that there are more women in primary “because” it pays less and they are forced there. It also doesn’t mean that they are pay less because they are women or that the role in general is pay less because it is generally dominated by women.

In the example that you mentioned in the private sector, if all of that is true, who’s at fault? You say in those jobs employees can bargain for better wages and that the men make more, but why is this? Is this because the women don’t bargain? Because they always lose at the bargaining (which would imply illegal discrimination)?

With most of these types of posts it always appears everyone is out to vilify someone.

In the example of the private sector it is part of a larger issue around the perception of women in the workplace and whilst it is something that is being raised in academia how exactly do you go about proving it? No employer is going to stand up and say, yes that’s why I paid that person less. In practice most people (male and female) don’t even realise they have these biases in those types of situations. I am in no way attempting to vilify anyone, instead I hope that people stop on think about those things so when they sit on a panel or decide on a pay rate they challenge their own biases and think about these things openly.

If there is no set rate…and one assumes that to be the case when you talk about negotiated remuneration, then how can you say anyone is being paid less UNFAIRLY? It is inconceivable that ALL men are better at negotiating salary than ALL women… so there would – of necessity be both men and women scattered throughout the negotiated “range”…. If the salary is negotiated the employer will no doubt happily say the person is being paid what was agreed. To suggest a NEGOTIATED/AGREED package is less BECAUSE the employee is a woman is ridiculous. This is almost the “woman as child” argument which has been used so often..(surprisingly by womens advocates!).and is, IMO, particularly offensive.