Women are still the majority of the low paid workers in Australia - a fact that is conveniently ignored by government

The Australian Taxation Office publishes a range of statistics which, despite the time lag, state and federal governments and their agencies rely on for a financial profile of the nation.

This April the data release covers the financial year 2014-15.

Table 3: Individuals – selected income items, 2013–14 to 2014–15 income years
Income item	2013–14			2014–15
	Individuals (no.)	Average ($)	Median ($)	Individuals (no.)	Average ($)	Median ($)
Salary or wages	10,304,687	56,689	46,656	10,469,919	57,576	47,502
Gross interest	7,335,773	1,821	162	7,659,362	1,622	138
Dividends – franked amount	2,861,982	7,971	506	2,849,504	7,776	549
Dividends – franking credit	2,855,343	3,422	218	2,843,250	3,338	237
Allowances, earnings, tips, director's fees etc	2,297,379	3,801	463	2,344,140	3,778	453
Net rent	2,033,973	−1,828	−1,675	2,077,235	−1,749	−1,624
Net non-primary production amount	1,748,849	28,993	5,122	1,786,937	28,582	4,927
Net income or loss from business – non-primary production transferred from item P8	1,078,383	26,269	12,095	1,122,260	26,192	12,221
Dividends – unfranked amount	1,060,280	887	78	1,064,264	942	84
Australian Government allowances and payments like Newstart, Youth Allowance and Austudy payment	922,538	5,664	4,942	966,709	5,906	5,178
Australian Government pensions and allowances	645,097	10,127	10,250	676,083	10,318	10,368
Net capital gain	609,678	23,585	1,901	672,484	25,944	2,137
Total income or loss	12,964,285	59,851	44,697	13,213,814	60,714	45,471

Note Total income or loss: components do not add to the total number of taxpayers because taxpayers may declare more than one type of income. Some components of total income are not listed in this table. The count, average and median for total income or loss are calculated including zeroes.

[See https://www.ato.gov.au/About-ATO/Research-and-statistics/In-detail/Taxation-statistics/Taxation-statistics-2014-15/?anchor=Individuals#Individuals]

Whichever way one looks at salary/wage line in this table it clearly shows that ordinary Australian workers are not doing well, with half having annual incomes below $47,502. That's 5.1 million people earning far less than the $195,130 base salary enjoyed by 
members of the Turnbull Government who are even now looking for ways to reduce the takehome pay of such workers. 

Of the 13.21 million individuals who lodged a tax return in 2015, 6.85 million were males and 6.35 million were females. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2013-14 there were also an est. 1.22 million people of working age lived alone with a significant number of these individuals having incomes below the median annual salary/wage, so it is likely that a similar situation existed in 2014-15.

If one divides the ATO tax returns by gender it is not hard to see that more women than men would be found in the group earning less than $47,502.

This is not just a passing phase in wages growth – women have consistently been on the bottom of the wage ladder this century. This despite the fact that they are better educated now than in centuries past and so many are in paid employment.

The Guardian helpfully published a breakdown on 18 April 2017 from which I selected three graphs to illustrate the point:

In the article Greg Jericho concluded: Women made up 45% of all people earning a taxable income in 2014-15, and yet they accounted for just 25% of those in the richest 10% but 57% of those in the poorest decile……It goes without saying that if you earn a large income you are more likely to be a man and if you earn a small income you are most likely to be a woman – and it really does not matter what your job is.

The Australian Government Workplace and Gender Equality Agency stated in August 2016:

The full-time average weekly ordinary earnings for women are 16.2% less than for men.

Among non-public sector organisations with 100 or more employees, the gender pay gap for full-time annualised base salary is 19.1%, and for full-time annualised total remuneration is 24.0%.

The full-time average hourly earnings for women are 13.9% less than men's full-time average hourly earnings.

The gender pay gap in ASX 200 organisations is 28.7%.

Average graduate salaries for women are 9.4% less than for men. When factors such as personal characteristics, occupation, industry and education are accounted for, average graduate salaries for women are 4.4% less than for men.

Average superannuation balances for women at retirement are 52.8% less than those for men.

Of people aged 65 years and older receiving the aged pension, 55.6% are women.

This agency also pointed out that:

Of all women aged 20-24, 90.1% have attained year 12 qualifications or above, compared to 86.3% of men in the same age bracket.

Of all women aged 25-29, 39.6% have achieved a bachelor degree or above, compared to 30.4% of men of the same age bracket.

A slightly higher proportion of men (6.1%) aged 15-74 years attained a postgraduate degree than women (5.7%) of the same age bracket.

The reality is that women have never enjoyed equal pay across all industries and occupations and the national economy relies on them supplying cheaper labour.

So the next time your local MP tells you that he or she understands how "middle Australia" is feeling or attempts to position their family there – openly scoff at such a nonsensical viewpoint.

If your MP tells you that he/she supports the right to equal pay - walk away whilst raising a middle finger in disgust.

Next time a man tells you that there is a level playing field.........

Many older Australian women alive today reached retirement age without any superannuation savings. Some will still do so into the future if they have predominately engaged in unpaid work during most of their working-age life.

Superannuation was first paid in the mid‑1800s as a benefit to certain employees in the public service and larger corporate organisations. Invitation to join what were then a limited number of superannuation schemes was predominately restricted to males at professional/managerial level. Full benefits upon retirement could be taken as a lump sum. By 1915 super earnings were exempt from taxation [taxreview.treasury.com.au].

As recently as the late 1960s women often faced an employment bar on marriage and/or once wed were forced to withdraw from any superannuation scheme they may have had the good fortune to be previously eligible for. [Paxton, JA, July 2014, Women and Superannuation: The Impact of the Family Law Superannuation Regime, p.23]

Superannuation was fairly uncommon in Australia until the 1970s, when it began to be included in industrial awards.

In 1985, only 39 per cent of the workforce had superannuation—24 per cent of women and 50 per cent of men had access to super.

At that stage, superannuation coverage was concentrated in higher paid white collar positions in large corporations and, in the public sector.

Superannuation became a major component of Australia's retirement system following the introduction of the Superannuation Guarantee in 1992. The Superannuation Guarantee requires employers to contribute a percentage of an employee's earnings into a superannuation fund, which the employee cannot access until they reach the superannuation preservation age. For most employees, superannuation coverage expanded following the introduction of compulsory superannuation.

In 1993, 81 per cent of employed Australians were covered by superannuation and the gender gap in superannuation coverage had narrowed, with 82 per cent of employed men and 78 per cent of employed women covered by superannuation. The employer contribution rate has increased over time, from 3 per cent in 1992 to the current rate of 9.5 per cent. 
[Economics References Committee, April 2016, 'A husband is not a retirement plan': Achieving economic security for women in retirement, p.6]

The superannuation industry, including the Commonwealth's defined benefit funds, may prefer to forget past practices. There was a time when women were forced to leave their super fund on marriage and, as a result, were deprived of unvested benefits. The winners then were long-term (usually permanent) employees, predominantly male, who reaped their full entitlements on retirement……

It wasn't too long ago that during a family breakdown, women who sacrificed a career to bring up a family were unable to access their partner's vested super benefits. Family law changes now allow women to access a fair share of their former partner's superannuation.  [The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 March 2016]

The table below shows the disparity between men's and women's superannuation balances over time across all age groups.

[Economics References Committee, April 2016, 'A husband is not a retirement plan': Achieving economic security for women in retirement, p.9]

World Economic Forum "Global Gender Gap Report 2016" - Australia

In 2016 the World Economic Forum ranked Australia in the top tier when it came to educational attainment – with  females having an equal literacy rate, comparable rates to males when it came to primary and secondary school enrolments and, a much higher rate of enrolment in tertiary education.

Yet this year Australia ranks 46^th out of 144 nations on the Global Gender Gap Index. In 2006 this country managed 15^th place out of 115.

In terms of ranking for economic participation and opportunity Australia was placed 42^nd.

However, in terms of wage equality for similar work (equal wage), high-income classified Australia now ranks 60^th and 57^th on estimated earned income - females on average earning est. 37 per cent less per annum than males.

In overall ranking the countries which do better than Australia are from 1 through to 45; Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, Ireland, Philippines, Slovenia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Switzerland, Burundi, Germany, Namibia, South Africa, Netherlands, France, Latvia, Denmark, United Kingdom, Mozambique, Estonia, Bolivia, Belgium, Lithuania, Moldova, Cuba, Barbados, Spain, Belarus, Portugal, Costa Rica, Argentina, Luxembourg, Canada, Cape Verde, Bahamas, Poland, Columbia, Ecuador, Bulgaria, Jamaica, Lao PDR, Trinidad and Tobago & the United States.

When it comes to the number of women with seats in parliament or holding ministerial positions, Australia ranks 50^th and 75^th respectively.

At this rate Australian women will reach full economic and political parity with men in about 200 years.

Even after all these years is male bias still affecting women's chances of surviving heart disease?

It has been known for many years that there are differences in how symptoms of heart disease present in male and female patients, yet it appears that this knowledge is still not translating into better health management practices when assessing and treating women with cardiovascular disease and heart failure.

Excerpts from Australian Catholic University, Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Hidden Hearts: Cardiovascular Risk and Disease in Australian Women, September 2016:

* Executive summary/Key findings

In the absence of a true appreciation of the burden and impact of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among Australian women, coupled with a lack of consistent, Australia-wide data, we compiled this report. Using the best available information, we reveal a number of key figures that should concern all Australians:

The five most common forms of CVD are highly prevalent in Australian women aged 35 years and over with 410,000, 177,000 and 162,000 affected by coronary artery disease (CAD), the form of heart failure (HF) most commonly linked to CAD and atrial fibrillation (AF), respectively.

An additional minimum of 90,000 and 30,000 women are hospitalised due to stroke and peripheral artery disease (PAD), each year. In 2016, 21,000, 14,000, 19,000, 12,000 and 3,000 Australian women will have suffered their first hospital admissions with CAD, HF, AF, stroke and PAD, respectively – see Figure 1.

Tragically, approximately 3,400 Australian women each year will suffer a sudden and fatal cardiac event without ever reaching hospital. Every year, these five conditions provoke a minimum of 260,000 (CAD), 73,000 (HF), 122,000 (AF), 90,000 (stroke) and 30,000 (PAD) hospital admissions among Australian women – see Figure 1.

Even with hospital treatment all forms of CVD are deadly and disabling with one in nine (2,200) women admitted for the first time with CAD dead within 28-days, and more than one third admitted for the first time with HF or stroke dead within 12 months.

The annual estimated cost of hospital care for the most common forms of CVD among Australian women alone is more than $3 billion. Within an ageing population in whom levels of most risk factors are at historically high levels, the burden of CVD among Australian women is set to increase for the foreseeable future.

There is still much to be learned in best preventing and treating CVD in Australian women; particularly in vulnerable individuals/communities.

*

* It is well recognised that the natural history and profile of women with CVD are typically different from their male counterparts.

Current management guidelines reflect a male bias due to the poor representation of women in clinical trials of new therapies.

Women are more likely to display dose-related adverse drug events from CVD pharmacotherapies due to smaller body size, higher body fat, different

metabolism and more kidney dysfunction.

Disparity also exists in cardiac rehabilitation with women failing to attend more often than men in addition to clinicians tending to refer men more frequently.

* Evidence-based management for most forms of CVD are based on clinical trials that have a higher proportion of younger men and/or less complex cases.

* CVD disproportionately affects the Indigenous peoples of Australian and in particular Indigenous women who develop and die from CVD at a much younger age.

* CVD represents an enormous health issue for Australian women. It requires a dedicated response, from the community to governments to minimise already high rates of highly preventable cardiovascular events.

Women living in the Northern Rivers region should note that in 2010-2011, the leading cause of death in the Northern NSW Local Health District  was circulatory disease (which includes cardiovascular disease), which was significantly higher than for all NSW - 193/100,000 compared to 167/100,000 according to the December 2015 health fact sheet produced by the NSW North Coast Public Health Unit.

Live in the Tweed Valley? Want to help save a vital local women's service? Then read on....

Federal Labor MP for Richmond Justine Elliot on Facebook, Wednesday 20 January 2016, calling for people in the Tweed Valley to door knock a petition to save Tweed Valley Women’s Service and thirteen local jobs:

Here’s the link to my Petition http://bit.ly/1njNOu8 calling for the Nationals to restore NSW Government funding for the Tweed Valley Women’s Service. Please return the completed originals to my office at:
PO Box 6996
Tweed Heads South
NSW 2486

For these Petitions to be submitted the NSW Parliament requires the following:
• the person signing must be a Resident/Citizen of NSW
• NO FAXES of signed petition
• NO PHOTOCOPIES of signed petition
• ONLY ORIGINALS will be accepted
• Every signature must be original hand-writing, and signatures must not be pasted on, photocopied or transferred in any other way.

Text of petition:

http://freepdfhosting.com/879bbcd166.pdf

Murdoch media's welfare recipient bashing comes undone

Adjudication No. 1568: Margaret Moir/The Advertiser (September 2013)  

Document Type: Complaints

Outcome: Adjudications

Date: 5 Sep 2013

The Press Council has considered a complaint about an article “Welfare fraud costs us $78m” in The Advertiser and the adelaidenow website on 18 January 2013. The words “Single-parent women most likely to cheat” appeared above the headline. The first sentence said “South Australian welfare recipients have ripped off nearly $80 million from Centrelink in the past financial year and most of the fraudsters are women”.

After the article appeared, the Federal Department of Human Services (which had supplied some data for it) told the publication that fraud-related debt in South Australia in the past year had been about $2.5 million, not $78 million. The article was then removed from the website and a “clarification” was published in the newspaper on the following day.

Margaret Moir complained that the $78 million figure in the original article was “grossly inaccurate”. She said the subsequent clarification lacked prominence, especially given the prominence of the original article, the seriousness of the inaccuracy, and the linkage made with sole-parent women.

The publication acknowledged the mistakes but pointed to its action to correct them. It said page 2, where the clarification appeared, is one of the most read pages and is more prominent than page 5, where the original article appeared.

The Council’s Principles require publications to take reasonable steps to ensure that reports are accurate, fair and balanced. The Council has concluded that the inaccuracies arose from a failure to distinguish between the amount of overall debt and the small proportion of that amount which is due to fraud. They were aggravated by the inaccurate estimate of the share of the national debt total which was owed by South Australians. In addition, when stating how much the debt “costs us”, no account was taken of the fact that the department says most of it is being recovered.

The Council acknowledges there was some ambiguity in the way in which the department responded to the newspaper’s original request for information. In addition, two subsequent sentences in the article avoided to some extent the errors described above by saying that “welfare recipients in this state owe $78 million in fraudulently claimed and incorrectly overpaid benefits” and “only $43 million of this money is being recovered” by Centrelink from recipients. But they were not sufficiently clear and prominent to compensate for the serious errors in the headlines and first sentence.

Accordingly, the complaint on the ground of inaccuracy is upheld.

The Council’s Principles also require serious inaccuracies to be corrected promptly and with due prominence in order to neutralise, as far as possible, any damage caused by the original article. The Council concluded the “clarification”, while it may have addressed the Department’s concerns, did not effectively explain the errors for other readers. In addition, it should have been frankly headed as a “correction” and with words such as “welfare fraud” to help attract the attention of people who might have read the original article. It should have been positioned more prominently – for example, in the top half of page 2 (or any other page up to page 5, at the top of which the article itself had appeared). These aspects were especially important because of the link in the headlines between the alleged amount of fraud and the involvement of sole parent women.

Accordingly, the complaint about the “clarification” is upheld. The Council acknowledges, however, that the publication responded promptly when it became aware of the error, both by removing the article from its website and by publishing the “clarification” the following day in a genuine attempt to address the concerns which had been brought to its attention at that time.

Note (not required for publication by the newspaper):

The Council considered the publication’s online response. By swiftly removing the article from its website, it had ensured that the error did not continue. But readers who saw the original article online and did not see the clarification in print would not have been aware of the correction. The Council will consider specific standards for online corrections in order to address this type of problem.

Relevant Council Standards (not required for publication by the newspaper):

This adjudication applies part of General Principle 1: “Publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced.”; General Principle 2: “Where it is established that a serious inaccuracy has been published, a publication should promptly correct the error, giving the correction due prominence”; and Note 2: “The Council interprets ‘due prominence’ as requiring the publication to ensure the retraction, clarification, correction, explanation or apology has the effect, as far as possible, of neutralising any damage arising from the original publication.”

Equal pay is still a dream for most Australian women

The Sydney Morning Herald 3 September 2013:

The pay gap in favour of men has widened in two of Australia's most female-dominated industries.

The health care and social assistance sector has the biggest gender pay gap in the country even though women outnumber men by four to one. Full-time men in that sector are paid 32.3 per cent more on average than full-time women, up 1 percentage point in the past year. Two other sectors - finance and insurance and professional, scientific and technical services - also have an average pay gap in favour of men of more than 30 per cent.

In retail trade, where 56 per cent of the workers are women, the gender pay gap widened by 3.4 per cent in the past year, second to construction where the average gender pay discrepancy increased by 4.9 per cent.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency says the gender pay gap across all sectors of the Australian economy stands at 17.5 per cent. That's 2.6 percentage points higher than it was in 2004 and one percentage point higher than it was in 1995. The average full-time woman now earns $266.20 less each week than the average full-time working man, an annual difference of $13,842.....

Average super payments for women ($63,412) are 42 per cent less than men's ($109,609), the ACTU report says.

Allan Jones and #destroythejoint

From Twitter and #destroythejoint - the memes keep coming.

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Women, Work & $$$$$ in NSW

From the Women in NSW 2012 report [NSW Family & Community Services, July 2012]:

Women in NSW are likely to live in cities, come from diverse cultural backgrounds and speak many languages.

Aboriginal women make up 2.1 percent of the female population of NSW, which in 2011 was 3.68 million women or 50.4 percent of the state’s population. In 2006, nearly two-thirds of NSW women lived in Sydney, with most of the remainder in regional areas and less than one percent in remote areas of the state.

Nearly a quarter of NSW women were born overseas, and one in five spoke a language other than English at home.

The median age of women in NSW in 2011 (38 years) is nearly two years older than that of men. Women are more likely to live longer than men; however, the gap is closing.

Women are far more likely to be at the head of a single parent household than are men. One in five families in NSW is headed by a single parent, and 88 percent of single parents are women.

Over a third of women over 65 years live alone. Women between the ages of 80 and 84 years are more than twice as likely as men to be living alone.

72% of girls in NSW completed year 12 in 2011 compared with 63% of boys.

In 2010, women made up 57 percent of NSW undergraduate students (117,382 in total). Men made up 43 percent (88,954) of undergraduate students. Some 28,400 more NSW women than men commenced an undergraduate higher education course in 2010, a 14 percentage point gap in women’s favour.

In 2011, the median starting salary for women aged less than 25 with a bachelor’s degree in their first full-time job was $50,000 per year, 7.4% ($4,000) less than men.

As at November 2011, NSW women working full-time ordinary hours each week earned on average $1,212, compared with men, who earned $1,404 each week.  

Men earned on average 14 percent more each week than women.

41,600 women in NSW commenced an apprenticeship or traineeship in the 12 months to September 2011, compared with 51,000 men.

22% of all apprenticeship and traineeship commencements in NSW are within traditional trades.

In the 12 months to September 2011, 13% of women (2,629) who commenced an apprenticeship or traineeship did so in a traditional trade. Fifty of those women commenced a construction trade compared to 5,140 men. Similarly, only 116 women commenced an Automotive and engineering trade compared to 5,259 men.

Click on images to enlarge

41 percent of employed women work part-time and 28 percent are engaged as casuals

In the private sector, as of April 2012, 17 percent of all NSW directorships were held by women (compared to 14 percent nationally).

Around 29 percent of board members are women within the not-for-profit sector; in the NSW public sector, 37 percent of board and committee members are women.

The professions of law and education are approaching a gender-balanced workforce, but women form a distinct minority in senior roles.

NSW women’s status and experiences are very similar to those of Australian women more widely.