Workplace Gender Equality Amendment Bill welcomed but not enough

The proposed changes to the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment Bill 2023 whereby organisations with 100 employees or more will be asked to disclose their gender pay gaps for more transparency, in a move to narrow the gender pay gap are welcomed but also short-sighted because it fails to acknowledge, let alone address,?the intersectional pay gap that exists and persists in this country.?

There are many factors that contribute to the gender pay gap including discriminatory pay decisions, gender-segregated industries, female-dominated industries attracting lower pay, and women’s high rates of unpaid labour, which is why we cannot look at it just from a gender lens.??

The big pay discrepancy that keeps women with intersecting identities, including First Nations women, Women of Colour, women with a disability, and women from the LGBTQIA+ community, at the bottom, is not limited to just salary, but employers historically have also invested a lot less in women from diverse backgrounds in terms of training and career development opportunities and programs. This coupled with being perpetually underpaid has a significant impact on their career advancement and subsequently amplifies the socio-economic inequality that women from marginalised and racialised communities face.?

Existing career development programs or training fail women with intersecting identities because they are not contextualised for Women of Colour and they are conducted in environments that are not psychologically and culturally safe for Women of Colour to get the most out of these programs. And these are without a doubt contributing factors that widen the pay gap even more for Women of Colour.?

Women of Colour Australia in partnership with Women's Business, a First Nations owned and led organisation amplifying Women of Colour in leadership, and the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing Victorian Government recently launched Australia’s first Women of Colour Executive Leadership Program, WoC ELP developed by and for Women of Colour. It is a leadership program that is specifically designed to help propel Women of Colour into leadership positions and step into their power as changemakers and transformational leaders.

The only way that transparency in the gender pay gap will result in equality, is if we uncover all the factors and elements at play and take actions to challenge the system and the way leadership has been defined to this day.?

We would like to invite the Federal Government to go further than just gender when trying to address the pay gap and take this as an opportunity to also tackle the intersectional pay gap.?

The Women of Colour Executive Leadership Program is a joint-partnership program by:

? Women of Colour Australia: a non-profit organisation advocating for a fairer Australia for all Women of Colour

? Women's Business: a First Nations owned and led organisation amplifying Women of Colour in leadership

? Department of Families, Fairness and Housing Victorian Government

We acknowledge the Wallumattagal clan of the Darug nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which Women of Colour Australia is situated. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present. We acknowledge and honour the strength and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women with whom we stand in solidarity. We acknowledge that as settlers on this stolen Aboriginal land, we are beneficiaries of the dispossession, genocide, and ongoing colonial violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We believe that it is our collective responsibility and moral imperative to help dismantle the systemic barriers and structural inequities oppressing the original inhabitants of this land. We are also painfully aware that this land was taken forcibly, without a Treaty or reparations made. We have taken a practical step towards honouring sovereignty by?paying the rent?– and we invite you to do so too. This land is and always will be Aboriginal land. Sovereignty was never ceded.