Theres nothing equal about pay

Deputy Prime Minister, Juilia Gillard told the Australian today, the gender wage gap is very much still a part of employment in Australia.

Her comment pre empts an international report to be released this week by ACTU president Sharran Burrow that will confirm women's average earnings in Australia have dropped from 87c for every dollar earned by a man in 2004 to 84c now.

Ms Gillard concurs that the gap has become worse in recent times but the main cause of this is still unclear, and is not as blatantly discriminatory as a woman in the same position in the same company as a man being paid less.

Employer groups argue the that the the pay gap can be explained not only by woman working part-time jobs, but the skill shortages in male -dominated areas like mining result in inflated pay packets for men.

According to a recent survey of the the top 200 companies in Australia , female CEOs earn  half the amount their male counterparts do  and they are the minority as the majority of companies have male CEOs.

One reason suggested by Ms Gillard, is we still live in a predominantly paternalistic society where  mens work is more valued then females. It could be that there are fewer performance bonuses for high paid female executives, or to woman in the lower paid service sector.

Ms Gillard believes this gap could be lessened if women had the right to legally request part time work and there were increased rebates offered for childcare.