Work & Family

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Pay Equity

Pay equity ensures equal payment of adult males and adult females doing the same class of work or work of equal value. The significance of the concept lies in the fact that, historically in Australia, the rates of pay of males and females have not been equal even 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 wage 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 undervaluation of women’s paid work.

• Pay Equity Inquiry
• New Equal Remuneration Principle - 30 June 2000
• Pay Equity Research Series - Executive Summary
• Gap between men's and women's earnings? 
• Women's pay and employment patterns
• A history of pay equity