Principal speaker
Associate Professor Janis Bailey
Abstract: An extensive body of research shows that the gender pay gap is widespread and persistent, and that organisations play a key role in generating and perpetuating this gap. In academia, a key component of gender pay inequity is, potentially, ‘market’, ‘merit’ and performance loadings awarded to selected staff. While these systems may be formal (that is, under control by the organisation in some way) they are often not transparent and, indeed, may be highly secretive. These forms of less transparent pay setting are forms of high ‘regulation distance’, meaning the extent to which the terms of employment of particular workers are (un)regulated (Peetz forthcoming). The gender pay equity literature suggests that gender inequity increases with the degree of regulation distance.
To date, while there are a small number of studies of market and merit loadings in overseas universities (generally conducted at single institutions), we have had no Australian data on this issue. The Work and Careers in Australian Universities (WACAU) study - of academic staff (amongst others) at a representative sample of public universities - remedies that deficiency. Our principal research questions are:
1. Is the distribution of performance and/or market loadings in academia in Australia gendered?
2. Where awarded, do the quanta of such loadings vary with gender?
The paper shows that such loadings are indeed highly gendered in their distribution, and thus contributes to the literatures on employment regulation, and meritocracy and gender, in academic careers, with implications for organisational careers more broadly.
Authors: David Peetz is Professor of Employment Relations at the Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources (ERHR), and the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing (WOW), Griffith University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia as well as the author of Unions in a Contrary World (1998) and Brave New Workplace (2006) and co-author of Women of the Coal Rushes (2010), in addition to numerous academic articles, papers and reports.
Glenda Strachan is a Professor with the Department of ERHR, and a member of WOW. Her research focuses on contemporary and historical workplace change especially issues that relate to women’s working experiences.
Janis Bailey teaches in the Department of ERHR and is also a member of WOW. Her research interests include union strategy, and equity in the workplace.
Gillian Whitehouse is Professor of Political Science at the University of Queensland. She has made major contributions to knowledge in areas of gender and employment equity. A crucial aspect of her research has been its impact beyond academia: she has appeared as an expert witness in key Australian pay equity inquiries and cases and her work has contributed to the development of Equal Remuneration Principles and other policy advances in the Australian context.
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