Gender Pay Equity and Comparable Worth in Australia: A Reassessment

The Australian labour market is characterised by a persistent earnings differential between men and women. This article examines the contribution made by gender-based occupational segmentation to that gap using data from the 1993 Survey of Training and Education. It is estimated that occupational segmentation is responsible for between 3.9 and 4.9 percentage points of the earnings differential when measured across all employees. The comparable range after excluding managerial employees, however, is only 2.1 to 3.6 percentage points. Finally, the importance of segmentation for the gender earnings gap is found to be directly correlated with age, suggesting the intriguing possibility that the occupation-based inequity in pay will work itself out over time. That said, other explanations for this age effect also exist.