TAL backs Equal Pay Day – calls for greater change

Australia’s largest life insurer TAL is today, on Equal Pay Day, urging all businesses to take action to address the pay inequity for women.

In July TAL announced it had narrowed the ratio of female to male pay from 82% to almost 98%. That ratio has edged higher to 98.5% in TAL’s latest gender pay measure.

TAL Group CEO Jim Minto said: “Pay equity can be fixed now and employers should make it a priority so our society can correct once and for all this historical inequity.

“At TAL we have been actively addressing pay equity for almost two years and our ongoing results demonstrate positive change can be made. Our latest measure shows we have almost reached full parity with the continued focus on gender balanced recruitment and salary alignment when employees join TAL.”

Mr Minto said achieving pay equality for women in all workforces will help pave the way to resolve the gender imbalance at both management and board levels.

“We want to ensure as a society that all roles in business are shared equally between men and women and that all employees irrespective of their gender feel able to access the same opportunities,” he said.

The Australian Government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency released in March 2014 figures showing the current national gender pay gap for women is currently 17.1%, a level it has hovered around for many years.

The Equal Pay Day Alliance says that this discrepancy shows just how much more work is required in Australia to “reduce the damaging and substantial income gap between women and men”.