Pay equity inquiry

Pay equity ensures equal payment of adult males and adult females doing the same class of work or work of equal value. The signficance of the concept lies in the fact that, historically in Australia, the rates of pay of males and females have not been equal where the same class of work had been performed by both.

For the greater part of the twentieth century NSW maintained, as did the rest of Australia, institutionalised gender-based wage differentials through its system of centralised wages determination.

In 1996 the Industrial Relations Commission of NSW held a Pay Equity Inquiry and in 2000 it established Australia's first Equal Remuneration Principle to redress the historical gender-based underevaluation of women's paid work.