You can’t be what you can’t see in classroom
It’s one of the first lessons our children learn. Walk into any school’s administration block and, almost guaranteed, every person in that office is a woman. Walk into any classroom and, chances are, the teacher is a woman. But head straight to the principal’s office and you’re likely to meet a man in charge.
Indeed, while figures from the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority show that women make up 82 per cent of administrative and clerical staff, and more than 70 per cent of teaching staff, the OECD reports that their representation dwindles to just 40 per cent when it comes to leading schools.
Surely no one is intending to teach our children that even when women dominate the workforce, it’s men who reap the rewards at the top. Yet with statistics like these, this is the lesson that students subconsciously absorb.
According to data released just last week from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, our education industry is failing when it comes to meeting the gender pay gap, and Gold Coast schools are part of the problem.
The WGEA report included every private company with at least 100 employees, meaning only private school data was available, with Australia’s public sector companies to be reported on later this year or early 2025.
But first, to explain the data. Since 1969, it has been illegal to pay two people performing the same role differently, based on gender. However, it is perfectly acceptable to choose a man over a woman for a higher-paying role, and to choose a woman over a man for a lower-paying role, and that is what is happening across the country.
If you’re a woman working in a school, chances are you’ll be in a teaching or administrative role, earning in the upper-mid to low wage brackets. If you’re a man working in a school, chances are you’ll be earning in the highest wage bracket in a leadership or executive role. Thus the gender pay gap.
The gap was calculated using median earnings, whereby all employees’ pay was listed in ascending or descending order, and then the middle earner’s pay was compared across male and female cohorts. Average earnings were not used as they would be more highly skewed by executive pay, making the pay gap even larger.
The median gap was compared in both total remuneration – which included salary, super, bonuses, overtime and other employee payments such as company cars – and base salary.
The WGEA said a passing grade would be a gap of plus or minus five per cent or less. So let’s look at the report cards.
Across the education industry, from preschool to Year 12, the median total remuneration pay gap for education was 8.3 per cent, while the median base salary gender pay gap was eight per cent. But particularly galling was the statistic that while only 27 per cent of the total education workforce was male, men were overrepresented, at 33 per cent, in the highest pay brackets.
Yet that’s better than the majority of schools in our city.
Again, only private school data was available, but even a quick glance at the number of female principals at our private schools is shocking.
Of the 21 schools counted, only six have women principals – just 28 per cent female leadership in an industry where they represent 75 per cent of the total workforce.
According to the WGEA data, only four of our schools (no data for Silkwood, St Stephen’s and All Saints Anglican School), received a passing grade for the median total remuneration gender pay gap.
Somerset College came out on top, with an impressive negative gender pay gap of 0.4 per cent, while Yatala’s Rivermount College had a gender pay gap of 20.9 per cent.
However, every school except Somerset saw men over-represented in the upper quartile pay bracket, meaning that despite the low male representation in our schools’ workforce, they statistically stood a better chance than women at working in a high-paying role.
While this data was not overtly about discrimination, it did provoke questions about the value we place on women’s work.
For example, a comparison between the female-dominated education industry showed the average total remuneration was $69,000, against the average total remuneration of the male-dominated construction industry at $129,000.
It also raised questions about whether businesses have hiring and promoting biases, and how cultural and economic norms factor in. For example, a 2022 KPMG report found 36 per cent of gender pay gaps were caused by biased hiring practices and promotion pathways, with another 33 per cent due to care, family and workforce participation.
For the sake of our students, how do we ensure they are not just taught that women can be equal leaders, but they see it, too?
“Of the 21 schools counted, only six have women principals – just 28 per cent female leadership in an industry where they represent 75 per cent of the total workforce.