How to break the cycles that keep the gender pay gap open

August 19 marked Equal Pay Day - the 50 days into the new financial year that Australian women must work to earn the same, on average, as men did last year," Workplace Gender Equality Agency CEO Mary Wooldridge wrote this week.

"The date is based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data which shows that last year women earned, on average, 88￠ for every $1 men earned. This is the gender pay gap."

Wooldridge says her organisation has spent the last 50 days campaigning for employers to investigate the cause of the gender pay gap so they can take effective action to end it in their workplace.

Read more from Wooldridge on what businesses should do here .

Ultimately, you can't fix a problem you can't see. The looking alone is half the battle.

德勤 chief people officer Pip Dexter reflects that the public reporting of large employers’ gender pay gaps for the first time in February helped to narrow the gap by sharpening bosses’ focus on improving gender equality in the workplace.

“It has created a much broader awareness and understanding, and you also get value from the power of peer pressure,” said Dexter, noting that employers were naturally driven to achieve smaller gaps than their rivals.

While it's clear that Australia has a long way to go before it achieves gender equality in the workplace, it’s also true that the gender pay gap has never been smaller, based on ABS data released last Thursday. That story here .

Elsewhere on the gender equity front, Sally Patten and Patrick Durkin ask why there are no female leaders chairing ASX20 boards . The answer might be the catch-22 desire for "prior experience".?

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