Superannuation used to concentrate on the provision of benefits, rather than a set contribution rate for all employees which is hoped to provide an adequate retirement benefit.

Defined benefit salary and service related superannuation schemes used to cover most of the public sector, and certain private sector industries- notably insurance and banking, oil, and executives of other companies. Apart from grandfathered members only judges seem to have access to such retirement benefits.

Women will naturally have a lower retirement accumulation because of broken service. Should the compulsory levy for superannuation be higher for women than men. Such a differential would ensure that employers would prefer to employ men!

The safety net is the old age pension. Women are eligible to receive the pension at a younger age than men, although parity is being introduced gradually. Women do live longer than men, with expectancy at age 65 about five years greater.

I think one of the biggest issues with pay in general is the lack of transparency in the private sector. A male and a female can be in the same team, doing the same job but be totally unaware that they are earning different amounts (as there is a bit of a taboo regarding pay talk). I believe that this sort of information should be publically available. Companies should have the right to pay different people different salaries, but they should justify to their workers why that is the case. I think if this was in operation, the pay gap would be a lot closer.

As for the theory that women should be earning more due to the large amounts of women involved in tertiary studies, this is true to an extent. More women are graduating from our uni’s (which can only be a good thing). However, no one focuses on the lower ends of the spectrum. According to the ABS, more men than women have graduated High School in Year 12 in Australia. While this is mainly legacy information and will change as the demographics move, surely this could also help explain why women sometimes struggle to obtain pay equity at this current stage. Lack of at least a Year 12 education will seriously limit someones earning potential in future.