Michelle Redfern Highlights Disparity Faced by Women in Australian Workforce

Michelle Redfern, diversity, equity and inclusion specialist and campaigner said Australian workforce’s women are effectively taxed at a middle additional rate of 19% as compared to their male counterparts for work. This disparity exemplifies that females spend their career’s 9 years on average working for free in comparison to men.

She stated, “Study after study points to a stubborn pay gap in the Australian workforce and it’s now time to call it out for what it is: a discriminatory tax on women’s employment. Worse still, my research reveals that nearly all women feel blocked in their attempts to try and make up the difference by getting promoted due to a lack of targeted in-house training, coaching and mentoring.  Two thirds (66%) say that their leaders’ coaching and mentoring skills are poor to non-existent.”

Pew Research Center’s worldwide analysis shows that putting a calculation to the global workforce where women make up 54 percent and then become minority at every position/rank, that could be an ‘entry level manager’ or a CEO.

Michelle added, “If women were unionised as a gender, this unfair discrepancy would have been eliminated years ago.  As it is, progress to equality in the workplace is painfully and punitively slow, bound up in opaque policies and flimsy targets.”