When you look at how much people actually take home, women still earn much less than men

The latest ATO taxation statistics show that women in 2017-18 made up a record number of the top 10% of income earners, but that good news is unable to mask that overall – whether in high or low-paid jobs – women continue to earn much less than men.

When I was investigating the incidence of negative gearing among every occupation, I was not particularly worried about the breakdown among men and women.

But then I came across barristers.

Barristers are not who you would think of as poor. And yet despite having an average total income in 2017-18 of $131,251 (which felt a little low) just 9.9% of them where negative gearing.

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This was less than expected – solicitors had almost the same average income and yet 16.1% of them where claiming a rental loss.

It was particularly odd.

The reason was quickly apparent – not that barristers had some odd hatred of negative gearing, but gender.

Across a vast majority of occupations men are paid more than women. I am not talking here of their rate per hour, but how much they actually take home in a year.

The great thing about the taxation statistics is it cuts through everything. Sure hourly rate is important, but you don’t spend your hourly rate, you spend what you actually earn.

Two people might both be on $40 an hour, but if one works 15 hours a week and the other 38, the second person earns $79,040 a year compared to the other on $31,200.

And this is what the taxation statistics show – not what is paid per hour, but who actually earns the most.

And it is clear the answer is men.

Women make up 49% of all taxpayers, but they account for just 27% of those in the top tax bracket – a slight increase on 2016-17. And it is instructive that the two tax brackets where women are overrepresented are the two lowest:

Women make up more than half of the bottom 40% of income earners and are massively underrepresented in the top 3 deciles.

In 2017-18, women made up just 30% of the top 10% of income earners – and yet even that amount was a record:

It might be unsurprising that the wealthy are most likely to be men, but across the 911 occupations (excluding apprentices) where there were at least 50 men and women working, only 56 had women with a higher median income than men – just 6%.

And none of this has anything to do with the number of women working in those occupations.

Women make up two-thirds of bank tellers and other bank workers, and yet they account for just a quarter of such workers in the top tax bracket and 82% of those in the occupation earning less than $37,000:

We see a similar picture when we turn to my own occupation. Women make up more than half of all journalists, but under a third of those who are in the top tax bracket:

And over the past six years, there really has been no great change:

And somewhat oddly, we see this income disparity among both high and low-income occupations. Of the 30 occupations with the highest average incomes, just one – magistrates – has women with a higher average income.

But among the 30 occupations with the lowest average income (excluding apprentices) we see much the same. Of those occupations just seven feature women earning on average more.

But the big difference is overall numbers. Women make up only 30% of workers in the top 30 paying occupations, but two-thirds of those working in the bottom 30 paying jobs.

Men are also much more likely to be in occupations where there is a big difference between the average and the median income. Such a difference indicates that there are a few who earn a massive amount more than half of those who ply that trade.

And this brings us back to barristers. The average income for a barrister is $131,251, but the median income was just $45,376 – the second largest gap between the average and the median.

The answer lay in the gender breakdown – women were massively underrepresented among the high-income-earning barristers, despite making up more than half of those in the profession:

The median income for a male barrister in 2017-18 was $113,667, while for women it was a paltry $32,464.

And while this massive disparity was not reflective among solicitors, the bias remained:

As a result 22% of male barristers were negative gearing – one of the highest levels among all occupations, while just 9% of their female counterparts were doing the same.

At this point many will argue that it is all about choice – women clearly are happier to work part-time or to take lower-paying roles. Others will say it is irrelevant so long as they are paid the same rate.

And yet that we see the disparities across all professions – high paying and low paying, those with more men, those with more women – suggests a deeper issue going on.

And I suspect it is an issue that is much easier to swallow if you happen to be among those for whom 94% of occupations will see you on average earning more.

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