Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Dellwyn Stuart: Mind the Gap co-founder on the gender pay gap at the lowest it's ever been

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Dellwyn Stuart: Mind the Gap co-founder on the gender pay gap at the lowest it's ever been · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The difference between the salaries of men and women is
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: the lowest it's ever been. Stats indeed says the gender
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: pay gap fell from eight percent last year to just
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: five point two percent this year. Delwin Stewart is Mine
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: The Gap co founder with me on the line this morning, Darlwin,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: good morning, good morning. Why is this do you think, Well.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: On the surface, that's a historical drop. It's the biggest
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: drop we've ever seen since it started to be recorded.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: But we need to be cautious as that may just
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: reflect job losses amongst low paid women rather than true gains.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: So because of the state of the economy, that's what's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: causing the drop.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and a week labor market women, especially those in
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: lower paid jobs, can be dispropertionately hurt, so as they're
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: leaving the market, that distorts the number. We've seen that
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: happen historically at other times of recession or tough times
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: where unemployment has spiked and it gives an artificial improvement
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: in your number. But unless you look under the hood
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: and you understand what's really going on and all the factors,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: then you can be mislead by a headline number.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Do you think the number will go back up as
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: things improve.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It's a danger that it will. Yes. Absolutely.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Is this because women do more part time work?
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, women do tend to opt because they're still carrying
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: the majority of the load of parenting, they tend to
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: opt for part time work more. And it's often those
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: roles that are cut. We saw that really strongly during COVID,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: that are all of those part time roles. It's divanished.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: If the gap improves when things are tough, does it
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: not prove that it's not sexism that's actually causing it.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's the type of work. You know, part timers don't
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: progress as much, don't get paid as much.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's been numerous studies that have looked at
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: this about what actually is affecting contributing to the pay gap,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: and consistently they show that only about twenty percent of
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: the gap is about the type of work you do,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the education that you've had, the sector that you choose
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: part time full time. The rest of the eighty percent
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: is unattributable to those things, so we don't know. Well,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: that's where we say that's the kind of things can
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: come into play, like sexism basically and racism, because this
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: gap is only giving you the average musient. It's not
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: telling you what the gap is for Marian Pacific women,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: and traditionally it's significantly larger for Mariian Pacific women.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Darwin, has anyone compared part time men to part time
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: women to see how big that gap is?
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I haven't. I'm not aware of of that.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't they give us a pretty good sense of whether
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: that is what exactly the problem is.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, we all like to think that there is
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: one problem and it will solve everything, the silver billet theory,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: but actually there's not one solution here. There's some really
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: good changes that have been happening in the last five years.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: The Mind the Gap campaign really changed. It was understanding
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: of the issue. The government will recently has created a
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: free pay gap tool that's freely availe that it helps
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: people to address this and understand it in their business.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: There are good things happening. It's just the danger of
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: looking at one number and thinking there's one solution isn't
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: going to solve our problems.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I would appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for being
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: with me. Dylan Stewart. Mind the Gat co founded for
• 3:41
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• 3:44
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• 3:48
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