Women on Boards explores whether the gender pay gap driven by discrimination or personal choice. Professor Claudia Goldin, the 2023 Nobel Prize Winner in Economic Sciences, who was awarded for ‘for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”, says it’s not personal choice or women's preferences. She identified an unhealthy phenomenon of “greedy work” in which employers demand excessive hours and 24/7 availability in modern work culture, which creates a gender divide by penalising those workers – predominantly women – whose caregiving role collides with excessive employer expectations.

CEO of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency that determines the date of Equal Pay Day , Mary Wooldridge has said organisations must “reimagine” what senior leaders and managers look like if we are to make progress on closing the gender pay gap. WGEA published the gender pay gaps of more than 5000 firms and the findings showed there is a median gender pay gap in every single industry in Australia. 

Madeline Hislop writes in Women's Agenda that we need true buy-in form men to reach workplace equality.  She reports men are more likely to hold the CEO role in almost every industry in Australia. Meanwhile, just 22% of CEOs and 42% of managers in Australia are women.  At home, women continue to bear the lion’s share of domestic labour and caring responsibilities, and are far more likely to engage in paid work in a part-time capacity and in lower-paid industries. Female entrepreneurs are much less likely to secure VC funding and are more likely to face discrimination. 

Lacey Filipich writes that the gender pay gap is only part of the story.  The Gender Available Savings Penalty gap is actually 96%. The baseline should be taken from basic cost of living, not $0.  We all have the same basic expenses, but women have less left after these are covered than men do so it’s harder for women to save and get ahead. Hence the lower home ownership and superannuation.  Makes sense.