As part of a campaign designed to focus attention on the barriers that inhibit women from achieving the same financial security as men, ANZ has released its ANZ Women’s Report: Barriers to Achieving Financial Gender Equity, which highlights many of the inequalities women face and the effects these have on their financial wellbeing.
Factors such as study and career choice, responsibility for care, and discrimination and structural bias in the workplace prevent women earning the same amount as men, and ANZ said this will leave nearly 90 per cent of women inadequately positioned for retirement.
Women earn on average $295 per week less than men, or $15,000 per year. Over a 45-year career, this equates to a difference in earnings of $700,000, the report said.
“The single most important reason many women in Australia continue to earn lower wages than men for similar work is because of their gender,” the report said.
“Women entering their first paid job after university graduation earn on average four per cent less than men. This gender gap progressively widens throughout their careers and is most prominent in senior leadership positions.”
The ANZ report also noted that while men and women may be discriminated against by their employer when looking for flexible work hours to assist with caring responsibilities, penalties for women are “much harsher”.
As part of ANZ’s initiative to address gender-based financial inequality, the bank has launched a variety of tools to help advisers better engage with clients and to help provide a more sustainable financial future for Australia’s women.
You need to be prepared to walk away from a job offer if you know that you are not being paid the ‘market rate’. Also, when you have children, really try to come back to work in your profession. e.g if you were a BDM before, don’t come back and be the office client service person. Women must try hard to get part time work in their profession and this is where the FP industry is still pretty hopeless.
@ Nackers
I couldn’t agree more. Some of my best collegues/managers were female. Had nothing to do with their gender they were simply the right person for the job. All these new initiatives such as 50% female management etc just means that gender will definitely play a role in hiring irrelevant of who is better for the job. It is trying to fight ‘inequality’ with supremacy which is never going to amount to a level playing ground.
I find it hard to understand how this can be – i have been in the workforce, mostly corporate for nearly 35 years and in my time i have never seen inequality in salaries. I have had females work for me and i have worked for females and at no time were they paid any different to the males.
What i have seen in recent years is females put in roles because a senior manager has to tick the box that says he has female managers working for him. In most cases they were not suited to roles and have failed which has been to the detriment of both the organisation and the individual
I have had absolutely brilliant female workers working for me but they did not get the role because they were female – they got the job because they were the best candidate and were paid no different to the male workers
I think we need to educate hiring managers to hire the right people and pay them accordingly as opposed to focusing on the number of females they have working in certain roles – you will find as i did that most of the best candidates are females