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Speaker 1: The difference between the salaries of men and women is

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Speaker 1: the lowest it's ever been. Stats indeed says the gender

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Speaker 1: pay gap fell from eight percent last year to just

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Speaker 1: five point two percent this year. Delwin Stewart is Mine

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Speaker 1: The Gap co founder with me on the line this morning, Darlwin,

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Speaker 1: good morning, good morning. Why is this do you think, Well.

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Speaker 2: On the surface, that's a historical drop. It's the biggest

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Speaker 2: drop we've ever seen since it started to be recorded.

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Speaker 2: But we need to be cautious as that may just

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Speaker 2: reflect job losses amongst low paid women rather than true gains.

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Speaker 1: So because of the state of the economy, that's what's

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Speaker 1: causing the drop.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and a week labor market women, especially those in

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Speaker 2: lower paid jobs, can be dispropertionately hurt, so as they're

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Speaker 2: leaving the market, that distorts the number. We've seen that

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Speaker 2: happen historically at other times of recession or tough times

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Speaker 2: where unemployment has spiked and it gives an artificial improvement

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Speaker 2: in your number. But unless you look under the hood

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Speaker 2: and you understand what's really going on and all the factors,

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Speaker 2: then you can be mislead by a headline number.

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Speaker 1: Do you think the number will go back up as

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Speaker 1: things improve.

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Speaker 2: It's a danger that it will. Yes. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: Is this because women do more part time work?

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Speaker 2: Yes, women do tend to opt because they're still carrying

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Speaker 2: the majority of the load of parenting, they tend to

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Speaker 2: opt for part time work more. And it's often those

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Speaker 2: roles that are cut. We saw that really strongly during COVID,

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Speaker 2: that are all of those part time roles. It's divanished.

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Speaker 1: If the gap improves when things are tough, does it

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Speaker 1: not prove that it's not sexism that's actually causing it.

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Speaker 1: It's the type of work. You know, part timers don't

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Speaker 1: progress as much, don't get paid as much.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's been numerous studies that have looked at

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Speaker 2: this about what actually is affecting contributing to the pay gap,

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Speaker 2: and consistently they show that only about twenty percent of

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Speaker 2: the gap is about the type of work you do,

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Speaker 2: the education that you've had, the sector that you choose

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Speaker 2: part time full time. The rest of the eighty percent

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Speaker 2: is unattributable to those things, so we don't know. Well,

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Speaker 2: that's where we say that's the kind of things can

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Speaker 2: come into play, like sexism basically and racism, because this

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Speaker 2: gap is only giving you the average musient. It's not

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Speaker 2: telling you what the gap is for Marian Pacific women,

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Speaker 2: and traditionally it's significantly larger for Mariian Pacific women.

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Speaker 1: Darwin, has anyone compared part time men to part time

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Speaker 1: women to see how big that gap is?

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Speaker 2: I haven't. I'm not aware of of that.

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Speaker 1: Wouldn't they give us a pretty good sense of whether

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Speaker 1: that is what exactly the problem is.

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Speaker 2: I mean, we all like to think that there is

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Speaker 2: one problem and it will solve everything, the silver billet theory,

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Speaker 2: but actually there's not one solution here. There's some really

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Speaker 2: good changes that have been happening in the last five years.

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Speaker 2: The Mind the Gap campaign really changed. It was understanding

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Speaker 2: of the issue. The government will recently has created a

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Speaker 2: free pay gap tool that's freely availe that it helps

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Speaker 2: people to address this and understand it in their business.

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Speaker 2: There are good things happening. It's just the danger of

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Speaker 2: looking at one number and thinking there's one solution isn't

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Speaker 2: going to solve our problems.

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Speaker 1: I would appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for being

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Speaker 1: with me. Dylan Stewart. Mind the Gat co founded for

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Speaker 1: more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge listen live to

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