Glassdoor

A US research agency had done a thorough study of gender based pay levels and found that in Australia women earn on average 3.9% less than men when all other factors are accounted for.

No mention of how big the error bars are on this number but you’d hope the number being reported is statistically significant.

3.9% is much less than the 24% that is reported by the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency because (a) the 24% figure wasn’t adjusted for industry sector (women cluster into certain industries putting downward pressure on salaries through supply and demand factors), and (b) the Agency has a self-interest in reporting the biggest number.

Even so, the 3.9% has to be explained.

I don’t think in this era that anyone is consciously paying women less than men for the same role.

I suspect that it’s got to do with the mechanism of pay rises.

Whilst in a role, pay rises would be similar between the sexes. That’s what I’ve observed anyway.

But as we all know the biggest salary jumps come with new roles.

My hypothesis is that men are more likely to change roles and hence get the greater pay increments associated with this behavior.

And it’s a hypothesis that can be tested with the existing data.

If the data was normalised for average period spent in a role then the 3.9% would probably go away. Or not, if my hypothesis is wrong.

All you’d have to do is take all of the data, men and women, and find the correlation between job hopping and salaries, and use that to correct the data.

My guess is that women are slightly less likely to change jobs than men simply due to the (on average) higher demands they face associated with parenting and domestic activities.

Which would suggest that any program aimed at removing gender inequality in pay levels would be well placed to:

1. Target domestic equality for working couples, and/or

2. Promote job hopping training for women.