Everyone should mind the gap

there was no longer a pay gap in New Zealand. Online commenters were typically more strident, some declaring the gap is a myth.

According to hard data, court battles and anecdotal evidence, it isn’t.

The Ministry of Women’s comparison of the median hourly earnings of men and women in full and part-time work showed the gender pay gap was 12 per cent last year. That compared to 16 per cent in 1998 although the rate of decline has stalled in the last decade.

A ministry research paper released in March looked at the reasons for the gap. It said in the past a big part of the disparity was due to differences in education, the occupations and industries that men and women worked in, or that women were more likely to work part-time because of child caring.

But the ministry said its research found those factors only explained around 20 percent of the current gap. The other 80 per cent involved ‘‘unexplained factors’’, including harder to measure influences such as conscious and unconscious bias in hirings, promotions and pay rates.

Another factor is that women are less successful at negotiating for pay rises – a trend highlighted in Australian research – whether because of their own behaviour or that of their employers.

Of wider concern is that femaledominated occupations are often undervalued. That was the crux of the successful pay equity case taken by aged care worker Kristine Bartlett against her employer. But advocates argue it also needs society to change its attitudes about how it values such work.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern has brought the issue to the election campaign, and she and the Greens say they will scrap the Government’s attempt to bridge some of the gap. They argue the Pay Equity and Equal Pay Bill , now before Parliament, makes it harder for women to address the issue with employers and, crucially, will not allow comparisons with pay rates in other industries. The Government says the bill will provide a fair and practical process for employees if they are not being paid what they are worth.

Legislation can only go so far. It will take more awareness from the public, more willingness from employers and perhaps more assertiveness from women to close the gap.