The latest in the excellent AMP.NATSEM series of reports has been released. This latest report focuses on the gender divide between men and women in the work place.
The following findings will update advisers, particularly in respect to the latest demographic trends impacting the lives of their current and prospective female clients.
In some areas the gender gap is narrowing, while in others there is as much of a gap between the sexes as ever:
- Baby Boomer women have the highest wage gap of all generations of 13 per cent. Gen X women have a lower wage gap of around 3.5 per cent, while the wage gap for Gen Y women is almost non-existent at 0.6 per cent.
- Women employed full-time with children are spending on average 15 hours a week cooking and cleaning while the men are spending only six hours a week on these tasks.
- Over 50 per cent of women with a post-school qualification, aged 25 to 34 years hold a bachelor degree or higher, compared with only around 43 per cent of men in the same age group.
- Over the past 20 years, women’s participation in the labour force has increased from 48.2 per cent in 1986 to 58.2 per cent in 2008.
- Women’s employment in professional occupations has also increased, by over 10 percentage points in the past 20 years, and currently they outnumber men, at 52.6 per cent.
- Women are now more likely to be working in highly skilled occupations than ever before but the Australian women’s employment rate is still 19 per cent lower than Australian men’s.
- A man who holds a bachelor degree or higher and has children will earn around $3.3 million over his working life compared with a woman in the same category who would earn only $1.8 million.
- Even for Gen Y, women are still behind men in accumulating superannuation, with 18 per cent of men having a super balance between $25,000 and $100,000, compared to 14 per cent of women of the same age. And retired men aged between 55 and 64 years have around 1.7 times the disposable weekly income of retired women in this age group.
- Unpaid leave is the second most frequent working arrangement used by women to care for others, with over a fifth of employed women using this arrangement, compared with only 11 per cent of men.
Commenting on these findings, AMP Financial Services Managing Director Craig Meller said that Gen Y is the first generation where the wages of women are almost on par with men:
“While the gender divide has narrowed, particularly for Gen Y, the risk remains that as these women progress through their careers, particularly during their child rearing years, they will still face the same dilemmas and glass ceilings as their Baby Boomer mothers,” said Mr Meller, who continued:
“So while much progress has been made, this report tells us that there is still more work to be done to narrow the gender divide, particularly in the child rearing years, so that when women leave and re-enter the workforce they don’t fall behind their male counterparts.”
