Peeling the inequality onion

Peeling the inequality onion: How Australia’s industrial system deals with discrimination in employment and pay equity

Speech by Sue Walpole, Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the 6th Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Adelaide, 25 April, 1996

This paper considers national and international legislative and other provisions regarding equality for women in the labour market. Australia ranks second to Sweden in terms of pay equity. It is argued that over the last two decades of global shifts to labour market decentralism and deregulation, Australian women have fared relatively well. Three fundamental reasons stand out:

1. The protection of women’s wages through a relatively centralised wage fixing system.
2. The growing understanding and incorporation of sex discrimination principles into industrial relations legislation through the use of international conventions.
3. Growing understanding of the complex and interrelated nature of women’s economic inequality, and the structural barriers which maintain it.

This paper will canvas these developments, and argue that equality for women at work can only be maintained and improved by building on the existing mechanisms to deal with discrimination, in terms of our international obligations, our national industrial relations and human rights legislation, and by individual organisations tackling the structures which impede the equal treatment of women workers.

It is, in effect, a call to the Federal Government to maintain those existing anti-discrimination and equal value provisions in industrial relations legislation, in order to maintain and improve economic equality for women and to ensure our compliance with the international conventions we have signed and ratified.

In part this relies on an understanding of what leads to the inequality of women throughout the world, and in our own particular countries. What we all perceive as we peel away the layers of the inequality onion is that women’s inequality is not a simple thing; there are a lot of layers, including:

• historical denial of access to many forms of employment, then to equal pay and opportunity in employment
• undervaluation of work performed traditionally by women, and
• Women’s disproportionate share of family care which reduces workforce participation, interrupts progression and affects training investment by women and employers.

The importance of international conventions to sex equality across nations

International bodies, such as the United Nations (UN), established the criteria for national action on sex equality. This resulted in marked similarities in anti-discrimination legislation, policies and concepts across nations, which reflect these broad human rights principles.1  Action for equality has been taken in the areas of human rights and labour standards by the UN, International Labour Organisation (ILO) and European Economic Community.2   International bodies have led national action on sex equality.

The effectiveness of such national measures depends on enforcement mechanisms, positive equality measures (Affirmative Action) and, importantly, integration into industrial relations systems.

The United Nations and International Labour Organisation Conventions concerning equality in employment are the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), ILO 100 and ILO 111.

CEDAW is designed to promote equal rights for women in all fields of activity - political, economic, social, cultural and civil. It is a declaratory instrument containing 30 articles which set out, in legally binding form, internationally accepted principles and measures to achieve equal rights. CEDAW was ratified by Australia in 1983. As part of its commitment to ratifying the Convention, the federal Government passed the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) in 1984, and CEDAW is scheduled to the SDA.

Article 11 of CEDAW sets out appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination in employment, 11(D) says

The right to equal remuneration, including benefits, and to equal treatment in respect of work of equal value, as well as equality of treatment in the evaluation of the quality of work.

The ILO Convention 100, Equal Remuneration for Work of Equal Value (the Equal Remuneration Convention) requires ratifying countries to ensure the application to all workers of the principle of equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value. The Convention requires a continuing program of action, rather than achievement of the Convention’s objectives prior to ratification.

The Equal Remuneration Convention covers equal pay for equal work claims running across occupations in addition to just within an occupation.3   The ILO Committee is on record as stating that cross-industry comparisons are necessary when implementing and construing the Equal Remuneration Convention.4

ILO Convention 111 - The Convention Concerning Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation ("the Discrimination Convention") enjoins parties to prevent discrimination in employment and occupation, and advises that the principle of remuneration for work of equal value should be upheld and implemented. This is a key link between the Equal Remuneration Convention and the Discrimination Convention, and is a recognition of the fundamental importance of pay equity as a measure of more general equality.

Discrimination is defined as:

(any) distinction, exclusion or preference which has the effect of nullifying or impairing equality of opportunity or treatment in employment or occupation.

The ILO Committee of Experts, which is responsible for reporting on the Convention and its implementation, interprets the requirements of the Convention, and provides guidance on key issues.

The Committee has noted repeatedly that most ratifying countries have difficulty in applying the main requirement of the Convention, the application of equal pay for work of equal value. They point to lack of knowledge of the dynamics of inequality because of lack of data and research, lack of understanding of "equal value", ignorance of the job evaluation processes necessary for determining the relative value of jobs, and lack of financial resources for collecting data and instituting appropriate job evaluation schemes.5

International understanding of complexity of pay equity

Reports from the ILO 100 Committee of Experts show that the more countries start to act on sex equality measures like equal pay, the more the complexity of the inequality is exposed. Once action for equal pay begins, the more the existence of problems in practice are disclosed, which initiates further action.

They have described both the complex nature of issues like pay equity, and have suggested approaches to deal with these complex issues on a national level succinctly:

"The application of the principle therefore occurs in successive stages with each step giving rise to the discovery of new difficulties or problems and consequently leading to the adoption of new remedial provisions to solve them. In this sense, the resolve to give effect to the Convention permits the perception from a different angle of further fields of discrimination which hitherto may have been difficult to see ... By its nature, by the way in which it develops, and as a result of the equivocal character of discrimination with regard to remuneration, the application will necessarily unearth difficulties."6

The Committee has also stressed one point that I think we must also stress - and that is what it terms "the indivisibility of equality".7   That is, that specific moves towards equality for women, such as equal pay and equal opportunity strategies, are inextricably linked to the general status of women. Justice Mary Gaudron - the first woman to be appointed to the High Court of Australia - put it best when she said "Equality is a meaningless abstraction unless it is founded on economic security and economic strength".

The broad scope of the Conventions are a recognition of that indivisibility. ILO 100, for example, requires that:

• all workers are covered
• all forms of remuneration are included
• comparisons should be available across enterprises and across dissimilar work, and
• comprehensive and explicit criteria should be used in describing and evaluating work.

The effect of the Conventions in Australia

In Australia, the combined effects of the United Nations and its agencies, in particular, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions, has had a profound effect on the consolidation of sex equality rights in employment.

A brief outline of the legislative history of industrial relations and the gradual incorporation of equality for women shows how Australia has slowly consolidated its commitment to the principles of those Conventions.

Australian women’s struggle for equal pay highlights this point. The first equal pay case recognised the most obvious barrier to equality, equal work but unequal pay. The limited success of this (only 18 percent of women were affected because so few women performed the same work as men) lead to the removal of another layer of the onion and to adoption of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. The next layer - the extension of the "family wage" component of men’s wages to women, removed another barrier. A further layer is being addressed through the work value aspects of the Minimum Rates Adjustment Process.

Equal pay was introduced in several stages; each stage broadening the understanding of what constitutes equality.

In 1969, the principle of equal pay for equal work was adopted by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC). Because of occupational segregation, this decision had no effect for over 80 percent of women, because they did not do the same work as men. Three years later, in 1972, the National Wage and Equal Pay cases determined the right to equal pay for work of equal value, but gave no guidance about how to carry out a comparative work evaluation, and maintained the traditional male minimum wage, with its inbuilt rate for "family considerations". In 1974, in recognition of the limited effect this had on improving women’s wages, the National Wage case gave an adult minimum wage for all workers.

A comparable worth test case was run in 1985, in an attempt to implement the principles of the 1972 equal value case. This had limited success because incomes policies at the time required the treatment of the case as an "anomaly", in order not to upset wage relativities more generally.

But perhaps more importantly in the long run, the AIRC ruled that it could give no decision on those aspects of remuneration which were not covered by its specific jurisdiction. This effectively ruled out any consideration of over award payments, as they were outside the award framework.

In my view, the single greatest factor impeding achievement of equal pay in Australia has been the failure to carry out the investigations of the nature and value of women’s work. Given the highly segregated nature of work in Australia, unless this is done, pay equity will never be achieved.

The introduction of the Minimum Rates Adjustment (MRA) process in 1989 attempted to establish consistent and stable rates of pay in and between minimum rates awards, based on comparative assessments of skills and responsibilities against certain benchmark award classifications. For the first time, traditionally female work could be compared to traditionally male work. However, it was not without problems; its effectiveness was highly reliant on how work is valued, and the mechanisms used to determine this value. Nonetheless, the explicit comparison of dissimilar work led to substantial wage increases for predominantly female workers in clerical and child care industries. The effectiveness of such strategies as the MRA can be shown by looking at pay equity in award rates of pay. Women now earn 93 percent of the base pay of men.8   This is largely due to the restructuring of awards through the application of MRAs and the Structural Efficiency Principle from the late 1980s onwards.

In the period between 1972 and 1975, when equal pay was gradually introduced, there was a sharp increase in women’s full time earnings, which increased from 65 percent to 76 percent. Since 1976, the pay gap has closed more slowly. Women working full time in non-managerial positions now earn 84 percent of the total earnings of men in non-managerial positions.9

The main factors that widen the pay gap are the greater hours men work (including overtime) and ‘plus payments’ such as bonus, discretionary and over award payments. These plus payments - outside and on top of the award system - show the most inequity, with women receiving only half the over award payments of men.10  They are the areas of the pay equation where the highest degree of management discretion exist. When these are taken into account, the pay gap widens with women earning 81 percent of men’s total earnings.11

The equal pay decision was implemented in awards through the mainstream industrial tribunals, and because of this, it was applied in almost all areas of work in some fashion. The cases were handled by unions on behalf of both members and non-members, since awards in some states apply to everyone who does a particular type of work, and federal awards have applied at a particular workplace without distinction of union members and non-members.

Regular centralised wage fixing within a framework of a national wages policy (through wage indexation in the 1970s and through the Accords from 1983 to 1993) has controlled the dispersion of wages. Gillian Whitehouse’s comparison of 13 OECD countries shows that centralisation is a key element in the male/female pay gap, and that the difference between the most and least centralised systems is 16.9 percent.12

Equal pay has been brought about through the existence of custom and practice centralism in our industrial relations system. Industrial awards - brought about by either conciliation or arbitration between labour and employers, have the force of statute, and legally bind the relevant parties. They can also become the national standard, through test cases heard by the AIRC. As they are incorporated into other awards at both state and federal level, more and more people are bound by the standard.

The success of the award system seems to lie in its ability to be applied from one area to another, and to all employees in an area.

The combination of this defacto centralism in industrial relations plus the ability to make comparisons between jobs in assessing value is, in large part, responsible for Australia’s successful track record in moving towards equal pay.

The other factor has been that a substantial part of Australia’s workforce, especially the public sector, gets paid exactly what is set out in the Award - paid rates. For those on minimum rates (where the award sets out only the minimum to be paid), the success had not been as great. For example, the pay equity ratio in the public sector is 87 percent, whereas it is only 77 percent in the private sector.13

The relatively slow progress towards equal pay should not blind us to the fact that women in Australia have nonetheless made substantial progress, in small incremental steps, towards equal pay.

We have also gained significant understanding of other layers of inequality through the implementation of rights based anti-discrimination legislation, such as the SDA, and related state legislation.

The SDA enacts CEDAW in Australia, and CEDAW is scheduled to the SDA. Article 11 (d) enjoins Australia to take all appropriate measures to ensure the right to equal remuneration, including benefits, and in equal treatment in respect of work of equal value, as well as equality of treatment in the evaluation of the quality of work.

The requirement for equal remuneration for work of equal value is therefore not just located in the industrial jurisdiction; there is a broad requirement for this principle in the human rights-based SDA.

However, we need to understand the different roles these two types of law have.

Discrimination legislation, such as the SDA, represents the first step from sex-divided legislation to legal equality. Discrimination legislation cannot deliver complete equality because the old framework of inequality is still there, and cultural support for it is pervasive. However, discrimination legislation is the necessary "circuit breaker", since until it is no longer legal to exclude people from employment on the basis of sex, other problems and issues are not even visible.

The existence of specialist legislation such as the SDA has another important function which relates back to the ILO Committee of Experts comments I outlined earlier - and that is that the operation of such legislation reveals new problems, and generates much greater awareness of the nature of sex inequality in employment.

One such example would be sex-based harassment and hostility in the workplace. The pervasive nature of sexual harassment is shown by the fact that it is the main area of complaint under the SDA, and in the 12 years of its operation sexual harassment has moved from being the butt of jokes ("I wish someone would harass me") to being recognised as a serious form of work-based harm. Further, the cases that come before HREOC indicate that sexual hostility towards women in male-dominated industries presents an alarming picture of the difficulties faced by women attempting to break into these areas.14  The effect of sexual harassment must be seen as an important factor in reproducing the marked segregation in the labour market by corralling women into a narrow part of the workforce.

Anti-discrimination legislation has been relatively successful in this area by providing individual redress for a specific form of sex-based harm but it also raises the issue of the effectiveness of specialist bodies such as HREOC in tackling these issues in a broad systemic way. There is little evidence that harassment levels have dropped despite the thousands of cases dealt with by human rights bodies.

The integration of human rights generally, and sex equality legislation specifically, into the old framework of inequity - as has occurred in the 1993 federal industrial relations amendments - brings us closer to peeling another layer from the onion of discrimination by formally recognising the importance of different layers of equality provisions, and their interaction. Sex discrimination legislation on its own may not affect workplace structures and systems so much as provide redress for specific acts of discrimination.

As the women’s movement has long recognised, International Conventions have always been important in stimulating and focusing demands for discrimination and EEO legislation. At the Federal level, in Australia, they are the critical factor because they are the source of constitutional power for enacting legislation.

Until 1993, Australia has relied on a mixture of standards at the federal level with standards - such as equal pay for work of equal value being set by the de facto system, and broad legal principles such as those embodied in the Sex Discrimination Act being established de jure.

The 1993 federal industrial relations changes transformed this. For the first time, the industrial system, built on the Australian award system, has moved to one which incorporates specific rights based on the international conventions.15   The effect of this in my view was to produce a quantum shift in the onion process. Instead of simply peeling each layer, we cut across the layers direct to the smelly centre of the onion.

The current Act ensures for the first time that all workers, regardless of their sex, race, colour, sexual preference, age, physical or mental disability marital status, pregnancy, family responsibilities, religion, political opinion, national extraction and social origin, have access to key minimum entitlements required by the international conventions ratified by Australia.

Minimum entitlements legislation give effect to key ILO and UN conventions:

• minimum wages (ILO 131)
• equal pay for work of equal value (ILO 100, 111 and the UN CEDAW)
• the right to 12 months unpaid parental leave (ILO 156 and ILO Rec 165)
• rights to redundancy pay and protection against dismissal (ILO 158) and,
• personal and carer leave (ILO 156).

Historically, the human rights jurisdiction had been separate from the industrial. Awards were exempt from the federal sex discrimination legislation until 1993. Although the discrimination jurisdiction does permit group actions, unions have generally preferred the collectively based industrial jurisdiction. Provisions now exist for discriminatory provisions in awards and agreements to be referred by me to the AIRC, which is required to remove the discrimination. There are many matters on which there is access to either jurisdiction. Individual rights and individual access to the AIRC have now been introduced. Historically, only registered organisations of employers and employees could appear in the jurisdiction about collective rights. Currently, individuals now have access to the AIRC in relation to termination of employment, equal pay, minimum wages and parental leave.

Sex-based discrimination can be dealt with in the individually - based discrimination jurisdiction, or the legislative system facilitates matters affecting the employment terms and conditions of GROUPS of women being dealt with in the collectively based industrial relations system.

The importance of these dual systems is clear. The more we learn about the complexity of pay inequity, the more it becomes clear that integrated measures to overcome historical and structural barriers are needed to overcome the limitations of a model based on redress for individual complaints. In Australia, this is currently being addressed through a duality of jurisdictions. Thus an equal pay claim can be taken in either the industrial or the discrimination jurisdiction, but if a broad solution is sought (eg a change in an award or agreement), it can only be taken in the industrial jurisdiction. However, if orders for individual damages are sought, these can only be awarded in the torts-based discrimination jurisdiction.

In both jurisdictions there is an increasing emphasis on integrating equality with productivity. For example, in the October 1995 National Wage Case decision, the AIRC determined that the third safety net rise would only be granted where attention had been paid to the removal of discrimination from the award, and where a model anti-discrimination clause is inserted into the award.

Both jurisdictions now mandates a redistribution of work and family responsibilities and their rewards.

Similarly, federal industrial relations jurisdiction also currently protects non-award employees, such as contractors and managers, in relation to equal pay and unjust dismissal. This is a growing issue for women, and employees more generally, as 20 percent of workers are outside the award system. This broadening of protection for all employees is of particular importance to women, who are the majority of all part time and casual workers, and thus have represented a higher proportion of non-award covered employees.

The importance of incorporating equity into industrial relations

The importance of incorporating equality into the collective industrial systems is demonstrated by international comparisons. Legislative provisions for sex equality do not, on their own, appear to produce the most equitable pay outcomes. Whitehouse demonstrates that while Canada had the most sophisticated sex equality legislation, it had worse outcomes that Sweden or Australia and the UK with respect to equal pay. She relates achievement of equality to centralised labour market institutions, and points to the ability of Sweden and Australia to run incomes policies which have addressed the interest of the low paid and so benefitted women. In a later study (1992) she found that a collective framework, centralised industrial relations and a high proportion of employment in the public sector were related to higher earnings for women, while equal pay and anti-discrimination legislation, in itself, was not.16   Also important was level of unionisation. The importance of central institutions is especially clear in Australia where equal pay provisions were introduced without any legislation.

The integration of these two systems (industrial and equity), is a major step forward for women’s economic equality because it incorporates concepts of rights into a system which provides collective solutions. It slices across the onion!

Preventing and eliminating discrimination on a number of grounds, including sex, is an object of the Industrial Relations Act (IRA). This is reflected in the termination of employment provisions, which explicitly prohibit termination related to one of those grounds.

Despite some scepticism on the part of the women’s movement, the Industrial Court of Australia was quick to respond to this legislative change. A number of recent unfair dismissal decisions have been heartening for anti-discrimination practitioners.

In one decision, the Judicial Registrar recognised sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination. The Registrar cited and applied the SDA definition of sexual harassment, and found that the Applicant would not have been subject to the harassment she experienced had she not been a woman. The respondent behaved the way he did towards the Applicant because she was a woman. The termination of employment was therefore causally related to the sex of the employee. (Jones v Armas Nominees No. VI 1245/94)

Of course, that principle is nothing new in the anti-discrimination jurisdiction. Case law firmly established that sexual harassment is sex discrimination, quite some years ago. What is new here is that this long-established anti-discrimination principle has now been applied in the industrial jurisdiction. Significantly, this did not occur until the requirement to take into account the principles embodied in the SDA relating to discrimination in employment was inserted into the Industrial Relations Act. Legislative change was required to achieve it.

The case of Thomas v Westpac Banking Corporation No. N11241 of 1994, IRC No. 339/95 illustrates the potential rewards for employers in the inter-relationship between the anti-discrimination and industrial jurisdictions. A manager was dismissed after a complaint of sexual harassment was found to be made out through internal investigation. Westpac’s complaint and investigation procedures, initially developed to meet the requirements of the SDA, were found to meet the procedural fairness requirements of the industrial legislation, and the dismissal was therefore not unfair.

Equality provisions under threat

Some of the major gains for women in the IRA are now under review by the government.

Two key areas are in jeopardy:

• key sections of minimum entitlements (equal remuneration, removal of consideration of discrimination in unfair dismissals), and
• the process for preventing discrimination in the certification of enterprise agreements.

Minimum wages and equal remuneration are seen as redundant and are to be repealed17 and the government has announced that what it sees as the "complex consultation requirements" of sections 170MC (1)(e)(f) and 170 MG will be removed, and absence of discrimination will be removed as a precondition to certification. This will be replaced with a right of redress for individuals who can show that they have been discriminated against by the operation of the agreement.18 However, requiring employees to prove discrimination after the event places disadvantaged groups such as women in a much more vulnerable position than the current requirement of including equity issues in the process of bargaining.

Research by the AIRC on the current requirements for equity in the process and outcomes of bargaining demonstrates that while there are some areas that require greater attention (for example, consultative mechanisms), that women under new federal agreements were more likely than men to say that they were better off as a result of bargaining, even though the pay increases they received were less than men’s.19  There is no evidence for the proposition that removal of the current requirements will do anything other than worsen this situation. Nor does there seem to be any evidence that the review requirements to ensure such equity issues are at least nominally addressed has impeded the bargaining process.

Government policy is that minimum conditions will include "equal pay for equal work of equal value without discrimination based on sex".20   This significantly weakens the current broadly-based definition of remuneration, and will remove existing rights based on the Conventions. By limiting the application of the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value, the government removes the right of women to challenge discrimination in all forms of remuneration - and those in which the biggest pay inequalities occur. I mentioned earlier that there is evidence that discretionary payments - payments outside the award - contain elements of discrimination. Over award payments are one such example. In total, women earn only 35 percent of the over award payments made to men; if managerial employees are excluded, adult women still only earn nearly 50 percent of the over awards paid to adult men.21   Management salaries in general show major pay differences on the basis of sex. Women senior executives with the same level of experience and of similar age earn around 20 percent less than their male counterparts.22  The narrowing of the application of equal pay as currently proposed, will exclude consideration of such issues on a systematic basis. Only those individuals with the personal and financial resources to pursue a remedy through the discrimination route will be able to achieve a remedy.

So what have we learnt from our history in this area? What we know is that as we regulate, as we legislate, we improve, slowly but surely, equity for women. The government’s proposals to move back to the situation in 1972 (equal pay for work of equal value) in a 1990s environment of decentralism and deregulation may well have unintended consequences for women, as well as jeopardise our commitment to our international obligations.

The government’s policy will also removes rights only just won. It limits our ability to remove more layers of that inequality onion, and to achieve systemic change for women’s economic equality.

Reference notes

1. Anti discrimination legislation across industrialised countries shares basic similarities, through prohibitions on discrimination, which are generally based on definitions in international conventions.

2. Sex equality was included in the UN Charter in 1945, followed by the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966. The primary European law on equality, the Treaty of Rome, included equal pay for equal work in 1957. Equal opportunity was included in ILO General Principles in 1919, in its Constitution and in the 1944 Declaration of Philadelphia. The Equal Remuneration Convention (100) was adopted in 1950, the equal opportunity and treatment convention (111) in 1958, the workers with family responsibilities convention (156) in 1981 and the Plan of Action on Equality of Opportunity and Treatment of Men and Women in Employment in 1987.

3. Pittard, M.J. "International Labour Standards in Australia: Wages, Equal Pay, Leave and Termination of Employment" (1994) 7 Australian Journal of Labour Law 170 at 195.

4. ILO Equal Remuneration: General Survey by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations International Labour Office, Geneva 1986 at p.10.

5. ILO Equal Remuneration: General Survey by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations International Labour Office, Geneva 1990, 1986, 1993.

6. ILO Equal Remuneration: General Survey by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations International Labour Office, Geneva , p 190-191.

7. ILO 1986 p. 72, ILO 1988 pp 129-30.

8. ABS Cat No 6305.0 May 1995 (Preliminary) This applies to non-managerial employees only.

9. ABS Cat No 6305.0, May 1995 (Preliminary)

10. See for example, HREOC, 1992, Just Rewards: A Report of the Inquiry into sex discrimination in over award payments, AGPS Canberra.

11. ABS Cat No 6305.0. These figures apply to non-managerial employees only.

12. Gillian Whitehouse, 1992, "Legislation and Labour Market Inequalities", Work Employment and Society, Vol 6(1) pp 65-86

13. ABS Cat No 6305.0 (Preliminary)

14. See for example, Horne & Anor v Press Clough Joint Venture & anor (1994) EOC 92-591

15. The IRC must variously:

• help to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex [objects in s.3];
• take account of the principles embodied in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 [s.93];
• remove provisions of awards that discriminate against an employee for the reason of (or for reasons including) sex [s.150A];
• remove discrimination from "discriminatory awards" [that is, awards which require acts which would be discriminatory under the SDA] referred to it by HREOC under s.50A of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984:s.113 of the IR Act;
• refuse to certify agreements or implement enterprise flexibility agreements that discriminate against an employee because of, or for reasons including, sex... [s.170MD; s.170ND];and
• consider making orders by virtue of which, for employees covered by the order, there will be equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value - this means fixing remuneration levels "without discrimination based on sex."[s.170BC]

16. Gillian Whitehouse, 1992, "Legislation and Labour Market Inequalities", Work Employment and Society, Vol 6(1) pp 65-86

17. The Hon Peter Reith, Minister for Industrial Relations, "The Reform of Workplace Relations: Implementation Discussion Paper, March 1996, p. 29.

18. The Hon Peter Reith, Minister for Industrial Relations, The Reform of Workplace Relations: Implementation Discussion Paper, March 1996, p. 15

19. Department of Industrial Relations, 1995, Enterprise Bargaining in Australia: Developments under the Industrial Relations Reform Act, August.

20. Ibid, p. 15

21. ABS, 1995, Employee Earnings and Hours, Preliminary, May. Catalogue No. 6305.0

22. Cullen Egen Dell, 1995, The Gender Gap in Executive Pay, Presentation to Private Sector EEO Practitioners Association, Sydney 26 July.

Last updated 1 December 2001