Gender Earnings and Part-Time Pay in Australia: 1990-1998

In October 1991 significant changes were made to the Australian industrial relationssystem aimed at giving primacy to enterprise (decentralized) bargaining and introducingmore flexibility into the system. It was widely predicted that the changes would adverselyimpact on the relative pay position of women and of part-time workers, in particular.Between 1990 and 1998, however, the gross gender wage ratio amongst full-timeemployees converged four percentage points to 88.8 per cent; corresponding convergencein the part-time labour market was equal to 10.3 percentage points. Decompositionsreported in this paper show that the convergence in the part-time labour market derivedfrom compositional shifts; the entry of less qualified and less experienced males intopart-time employment. Wage effects, specifically the experience of faster wage growthfor women relative to men, explain observed convergence in the full-time labour market.A number of possible reasons for the latter, including the potentially negative effects ofdeunionization on male wages, are advanced in the paper.