Today, 25th August 2023, is Equal Pay Day in Australia.

What is Equal Pay Day?

According to the WGEA, Workplace Gender Equality Agency “Equal Pay Day marks the 56 additional days from the end of the financial year women must work to earn the same average pay.”

For some people, the gender pay gap is hard to understand or does not seem relevant to their everyday lives.

But for women in Australia, the gender pay gap matters. The dollars and cents represent the value placed on their skills, labour and time. It represents missing money that could be spent to meet everyday costs of living.

Why is closing the gender pay gap so important?

Closing the gender pay gap at JK is about more than just ensuring each member of the team receives equal pay for equal work. It’s because we know the gender pay gap contributes to:

Financial Freedom 

The gender pay gap means that, on average, women retire with 23% less superannuation than men. This increases the risk of homelessness and poverty for women of retirement age, particularly where they have no partner.

Cycles of Abuse

The gender pay gap contributes to women’s financial dependency on men within heteronormative relationships. This can result in economic abuse and can make it challenging for women to leave a relationship that is financially, physically, or otherwise abusive

Career Progression

The gender pay gap means women are often required to take on a majority of responsibility for care of children. This lowers participation rates in the workforce, contributing to lower overall representation of women in leadership positions.

Closing the gap at JK Personnel

As an employer we take our responsibility in closing the pay gap seriously. We conducted internal research and produced our JK Personnel FY23 Gender Pay Gap Report and , from this, are proud to share that our results show that our Pay Parity for like-for-like roles is sitting at 99.98%.

Whilst this is a result to be proud of, we know there is still a lot to do to close the gap for good.

Our action plan

We are committed to working to close the gap over the next financial year by committing to the following actions:

• Provide pathways and additional support to increase female representation within our leadership team.
• Continue our support of values aligned partnerships such as the CORE Alliance that work to close the gap.
• Continue to align new people policies with WGEA guidelines for best practice.