Housing affordability a good reason to reduce Australia's gender pay gap
Government and business leaders should resolve in their New Year resolutions - if for no other reason than it’s in their commercial interests - to take affirmative action on the issue of Australia’s pay gap between men and women.
Macks Advisory believes these interests apply particularly when looking at housing affordability for single women, frequently put beyond their reach by the average 22.4% gap nationally between what men and women are paid for virtually the same work.
Clearly, the more women who can afford to buy or rent housing the better for governments and businesses.
An analysis of Australian Tax Office (ATO) figures shows women long term make more profits from real estate than men because they tend to buy properties with better returns and long-term growth value.
Furthermore, the proportion of women owners of investment properties has been growing faster than the rate for men in the past decade, even though women on average earn less than men.
But SA employers can take a bow
However, the average gender pay gap in SA is 20.4% which is 2% below the national average.
Director of the Federal Government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Libby Lyons, says that the Agency, established four years ago, is seeing increasing numbers of employers across the economy, persisting with efforts to close pay gaps.
“SA employers seem to be recognising more readily than in any other State that dealing effectively with this issue is not just a matter of satisfying public concern, but has significant potential benefits for the economy.”
Ms Lyons says SA has more women CEOs and board members than the national average, and “the big 9.7 percentage point jump from last year in companies here that are conducting pay gap analyses, demonstrates leadership in dealing with this issue”.
But she says the fact that women’s earnings in Australia are on average nationally just 78% of men’s full time earnings for comparable work, indicates “there’s still a lot to be done”.
Meanwhile women students can do much to help themselves by carefully researching course offers from universities. A national Graduate Outcomes survey released in January 2018, shows female graduates of bachelor degrees earn median salaries of $59,000 compared with $60,100 for males, although female engineering and communication graduates earn starting salaries equal or higher than men.
Depending on students’ degree choices, the gender gap in starting salaries can now often be only about 6%, the lowest generally in 40 years.
The gap and housing inequality
It’s true of course that women are more likely to work in low paying industries, and/or those tending to attract more of them than men – healthcare, some branches of education, human resources, administration, food services, retail and hospitality.
Also, more women than men prefer part-time or share jobs – or take longish career breaks to care for children.
But many organisations who for no valid reason pay equally skilled and experienced women less than men for comparable work, clearly lack appreciation of the detrimental effect of this both on the stability and efficiency of their businesses and on the economy as a whole.
For more than a decade people on the lowest incomes, particularly single women, have been most disadvantaged by housing price increases.
A recent study based on Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data showed that single women could afford to rent a one-bedroom flat in less than a quarter of Melbourne’s 106 suburbs, compared with 72 of those suburbs deemed affordable for them 17 years ago.
Since then the median rent for a one-bedroom flat has increased from $129 a week to $295. (It’s $285 in Adelaide.) This means that while Melbourne’s single women are stressed paying almost a third of their income on this sort of housing, single men, on an average wage of $1,305 a week can afford to rent comparable accommodation in 95 of the city’s 106 suburbs.
The study pointed out that because most suburbs listed as affordable were not inner-city ones, costs of transport and fuel further exacerbated single women’s difficulties, and if they happened to be single mothers, most would need more than a one-bedroom flat.
The prognosis is not good
The 2011 census indicated that more than 600,000 single women over the age of 45 on low to middle incomes didn’t own their own homes, but only half this number of men were in the same situation
When these women retire, rising costs of utilities and the cost of living in general will have made it increasingly difficult for them to rent accommodation.
Quite apart from all other considerations, this is not in the national interest.
A young single woman graduating today with honours from an Australian university faces the prospect of an employer paying her on average 9.3% less in a job than a man with the same qualifications would be paid. She is disadvantaged accordingly in where and how well she lives from the very start of her working life, and should she become a single parent her children would inherit consequences of this disadvantage.
While it’s good to know governments and businesses are discussing the needs for quotas and targets for improving gender equality numbers in the workforce, there’s little point in this if it means there are going to be increasing numbers of women who can’t afford housing.
While it’s good to see that increasing numbers of businesses are conducting pay gap analyses and addressing issues highlighted thereby, delayed action in dealing with them continues to adversely affect potentials in both businesses and the economy.
For patently the more women who own houses or who can afford to rent accommodation, the more sources of revenue for governments and businesses that offer goods and services.
And home approvals are still rising
Many a pundit in recent months has predicted a gradual easing of Australia’s housing boom, but at the beginning of 2017’s final quarter, the number of houses and flats being approved for construction was still increasing.
According to the ABS, approvals totalled 18,849 in September, an average 1.5% national increase on the previous month at a time when most economists were forecasting a 1% decrease, expected because regulators had tightened investor-lending rules.
The increase in SA was 6%.
It’ll be interesting to see, as a result of any closing of the wage gap between men and women, whether there’s an increase in the percentage of women moving into this new accommodation, either as owners or renters.
About 47% of all investment properties in Australia are now owned by women, largely because – according to Susan Farquhar of Calla Property -- women are often willing to take out mortgages when in their mid 30s or less, and when they’re single.
Ms Farquhar says not only are they generally willing to make this commitment younger than men, but are better at saving for a deposit and more willing than men to take advice about a proposed investment’s particular risks.
Macks Advisory believes governments and private sector businesses are doing themselves and the economy no favours, indeed a singular disservice, by not doing more to close the gender pay gap thereby helping to ensure more housing is within the financial resources of more women.
