Workplace Discrimination in Australia: Gender Pay Gap and Sexism

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Introduction
The term Workplace discrimination can be defined as the process of discrimination on
the basis of age, gender, religion, race as well as national origin of the employees in a workplace.
Workplace favouritism takes place while an employer takes negative action against an individual
who is an employee or an candidate who possess the potential to become a skilled employees due
to the above mentioned attributes. When it comes to workplace discrimination in Australia,
workplace discrimination against potential disabled employees takes place frequently. According
to a survey, only 52 percent of the total number of disabled individual in Australia is employed
compared to 83 percent of all working age people. The nation ranks 21st amongst 29th nations in
employment rates of disabled people. Another major employee discrimination issue includes
lower paying rate of women in Australia compared to that of men. In the year 2018, the full-time
gender pay gap in Australia is 14.6 percent and women make on average 244.80 dollar per week
less than men. In the following paragraph I will analyse a major employee discrimination issue
that has been highlighted very recently in Australia news Media. According to www.abc.net.au
(2019), the largest difference organizations of Australia are failing to attract a well as retain
female employees due to high workplace sexism as well as discrimination that are persistence in
some major sections of the industry that is multi-billion-dollar in nature.
Employers’ perspective
The national gender pay gap in Australia has maintained stability at 14 percent with men with
average earning of 241.50 dollars more per week compared to women. According to
www.bbc.com (2019), unlike the pay inequality that compares the wages of men as well as
woman performing the same task in a workplace. A gender pay difference at an organization is

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not illegal, in spite of the potential to reflect discrimination against women. According to a good
number of employers, the hike in salary has been provided on the basis of the performance of an
employee irrespective of their gender. Thus, one cannot blame an employer to discriminate an
employee on the basis of his or gender while making payment on the basis of their performance.
However, I personally have undergone scenarios, where the performance evaluation of the
employees are not entirely based on their performance but are biased towards the male
employees. Researchers have pointed out that the management of several institutions in Australia
prefers to recruit male employees over female employees. According to (www.abc.net.au 2019),
a significant number of Australian businesses are found to be recruiting male employees who are
unmarried, as per the a survey by workplace management consultancy Kronos. The chief reason
behind is that male employees are more likely work overtime and can be opted to in an
emergency situation compared to the women employees. Moreover, female employees, often
after marriage tends to leave the organization which in turn results in loss in the revenue of the
organization. Winchester and Browning (2015) have pointed our additional leave facilities that
an organization is stipulated to provide to the female employees can be considered as another
major reason behind the preference of male employees over female employees by the
organization.
Employees’ perspective
According to an analysis of the 20 largest military firms of the country it has been found
that only one out of five employees is women. It has also been found that women who are
working in the Australian defence industry are resigning from their job at excessively high rates
compared to the male counterparts. According to majority of the employees’ sexual harassment
as well as gender biased decision can be considered as two of the major reason behind this high