IN THE early 1980s, when I headed the Office of the Status of Women in the Hawke government, I would travel the country giving speeches about how women were faring. One of the positive trends I liked to identify was the significant increase in women's earnings in relation to men's.
Sure, women still earned only 80.1¢ for every dollar men got, but, I argued, given the trend in recent years we were speeding towards parity. No question about it.
Just 14 years earlier, in 1970, women earned only 59.1¢, but that had risen to 70.4¢ by 1973 and to 77.4¢ in 1975. In 1979 the figure was 80.6¢. OK, in 1984 it was down a bit but, I used to confidently assert, this is just a temporary blip. The gender pay gap was definitely going to be banished from the Australian economy.
See full Article: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/contributors/i-feel-like-a-million-dollars-then-sex-rears-its-ugly-head-20130104-2c8sd.html
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