International Women's Day:
International Women's Day:
This is a day when we celebrate women and their achievements, and perhaps also reflect on gender equality.
Sometimes I hear these sorts of comments.
"Why should women now get extra consideration, flexibility in the workplace or a position above an equally qualified male, especially if they are only willing to work part-time?”
“Things have changed - what are women complaining about?"
I hear these comments sometimes from men....but often from women. When these comments come from a woman, people could be forgiven for thinking that the actual facts must be invalid and that perhaps discrimination does not exist.
Those who don’t believe that bias exists are perhaps the biased ones.
These are the facts:
- Australian female vets earn an average of $78,176 annually compared to $112,950 for male vets.
- 53 per cent of male vets earned more than $100,000 a year compared with 23 per cent of females.
- “irrespective of the level of experience or number of hours worked, female vets in the study earned less than their male counterparts,”
Dr Cristy Secombe, head of Veterinary and Public Affairs
Vets in senior roles were shown identical performance reviews of vets who had been randomly assigned a male or female name.
"The profiles with the male name were consistently ranked as being more capable and appointed at a higher level than the female ones and also were, on average, awarded 10 per cent more salary than the female profiles,” Professor Slater.
How does gender inequality exist?
It exists formally through policies and decision-making practices, for example, denying promotion to part-time staff, as women are much more likely to work part-time than men, and informally through norms and customs, who gets included in or excluded in social and professional networks, and through language use, stereotypes and sexist or harassing behaviour.
Facts don't lie. I would like to encourage you on this day to reconsider how we look at gender equality.