Who'd have thought morning television would draw so much attention to the gender pay gap?
Workplace equality doesn't usually dominate the headlines. But it's been front and centre since Lisa Wilkinson quit Channel Nine's Today show on Monday after she was reportedly refused pay parity with co-host Karl Stefanovic.
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Gender pay gap by the numbers
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Dr Elizabeth Hill of the University of Sydney explains what are the causes for the gender pay gap.
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Gender pay gap by the numbers
Dr Elizabeth Hill of the University of Sydney explains what are the causes for the gender pay gap.
Australia's gender pay gap has been extraordinarily stable in the face of sweeping economic and social change in Australia. The same goes for many other countries.
A report released this month by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – a club of advanced-economy nations including Australia – takes a close look at international trends in gender pay equality.
It found the average gender pay gap among its 34 member countries "basically unchanged" since 2010.
So how does Australia's gap measure up by global standards?
The OECD makes a comparison using median monthly earnings for full-time male and female workers (in Australia we use normally average weekly earnings to calculate the difference, but we'll stick with the OECD's method here).
On the OECD's measure, Australia's gender pay gap was 13 per cent in 2015, meaning "the median full-time working woman earns 87¢ to every man's dollar". That disparity had narrowed by 1 percentage point during the previous five years and was a little under the OECD average of 14.6 per cent.
Australia's gap was smaller than in the US (18.9 per cent), Canada (18.6 per cent) and Britain (17.1 per cent). But it is four times larger than Belgium's (3.3 per cent) and more than twice the size of New Zealand's (6.1 per cent) where voters have just installed their third female prime minister, the 37-year-old Labour leader Jacinda Ardern.
Australia was rated a "mid-range performer" when it comes to gender equality.
The OECD's analysis draws attention to three important dimensions to pay disparities between women and men.
Firstly, gender pay gaps are especially wide among high-income earners. Australian Tax Office figures show some of the biggest discrepancies between women and men are amongst those employed as barristers, financial traders and surgeons. Figures released recently by the federal government's Workplace Gender Equity Agency revealed a 28 per cent gender pay gap amongst general managers based on total full-time remuneration.
Secondly, the pay gap between men and woman increases with age. Australia is one of six advanced economies where full-time-employed young women aged 25-29 are actually better paid, on average, that young men in the same age group.
But that advantage is quickly reversed as women get older. By the time Australian workers reach the 55-59 year-old age bracket, the pay gap in favour of men is a yawning 27 per cent.
Thirdly, gender pay gaps tend to be wider among parents than non-parents. This has been dubbed the "motherhood penalty" and researchers have found it persists even after controlling for a host of different worker and job attributes.
Have you noticed a link between these three global pay trends and the controversy triggered by Lisa Wilkinson's shock exit from Nine?
Wilkinson's demographic profile lines up with all three – she earns a high income, she is aged 57 and she is a mother of three.
According to the data, it's no wonder she was getting paid less than Stefanovic.
It's not fair. But when will it change?