Pay equity: 20 years of continuity and change

The story of pay equity in Australia is usually told in terms of the influence of wage setting institutions, and illustrated by the dramatic narrowing of the gender pay gap that occurred over the 1970s. The fate of pay equity since the 1980s has received much less attention, and indeed there has been more continuity than change over the past 20 years. The resilience of the ongoing gender pay gap is a reminder of the multiple and complex causes of gender pay inequality, and the need for a multi-faceted strategy to achieve further improvement. Anti-discrimination provisions have a role to play in this process, both in their capacity to highlight influences on pay inequality that lie outside the wages system and provide additional protections as the scope of industrial tribunals is narrowed under more decentralised wage setting arrangements.