Gender pay gap Australia: She’s on the Money financial adviser Victoria Devine’s astonishing graph

One of Australia’s top jobs pays men almost $200,000 more than their female counterparts, new figures show. 

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) annual release of tax statistics for 2019-2020 revealed men out-earned women in every single one of the country’s 20 highest paying jobs.

In some of the country’s top professions, the difference between the wages of men and women is small –  with just a $19,000 gap between engineering managers. 

In other industries, the pay disparity between the sexes is enormous with female barristers earning an average salary of $84,000 – the same wage as a high school teacher. That is some $120,000 less than their male counterparts in the courtroom.

Female surgeons are even worse off, earning a whopping $190,000 less than men. 

Australian tax data revealed women make a whopping $190,000 less than men in the country’s top job as surgeons (stock image)

Closing out the top five highest earning roles were anaesthetists, internal medical specialists, financial dealers and other medical practitioners – with a pay disparity ranging from $114,000 to $140,000. 

Victoria Devine, the founder and host of She’s on the Money, said the data helped prove the existence of a gender pay gay, which many claim doesn’t exist. 

‘Historically, when we have spoken about the gender pay gap (people say) ‘it’s not real’ and we get met with a lot of resistance,’ Ms Devine said in her gender pay gap and patriarchy podcast last Friday. 

‘We are directly comparing people doing the exact same job and there is almost a $200,000 disparity just because of their gender and I really can’t see any good reason for why that might be the case.’ 

Financial adviser, founder and host of She’s on the Money podcast, Victoria Devine (pictured) said women are not fighting to be paid as much as men but are fighting to earn a salary based on the role they have

The award-winning financial adviser said the ‘absolutely illegal’ pay disparity ‘ruffled her feathers’ and was something that needed to be spoken about. 

Ms Devine explained men were more likely to be picked for a promotion or a pay rise as women were not as confident to negotiate for themselves or as likely to be given a promotion due to unconscious bias.

‘Women are never seen as being as capable in roles like that as men, even though it is unequivocally untrue,’ Ms Devine said. 

‘We’re not fighting for women to earn the same as men. We are actually just fighting for women to earn what that job demands.  

‘I want my friend to go and work as a surgeon in a hospital and be paid for what the role demands not necessarily what they think they should pay a female.’ 

Ms Devine shared a graph of the data on Instagram, dividing her social media followers with many arguing the figures were skewed and did not account for hours worked. 

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) annual release of tax statistics for 2019-2020 revealed men out-earned women in the countries 20 highest paying jobs with a pay disparity ranging from $19,000 to $190,000 (pictured)

‘This appears to be taxable income split by gender based on tax returns lodged…it doesn’t take into consideration the actual hours worked e.g. part time/full time which skews the data making the gap a lot larger than it actually is,’ one user wrote. 

‘For those of you saying, women taking time off for babies- Valid. So I feel like seeing a comparison for hourly or weekly rate/wage would be more accurate to compare against,’ another user commented. 

Unfortunately, the data does not break down the difference between part-time and full-time or the amount of hours worked, which could explain some of the pay disparity between men and women. 

However, the data reveals how much each gender earns within a year across the entire economy and women, regardless of hourly pay rates, are much less likely to bring home more than men. 

Women made up 49 per cent of all taxpayers in 2019-20 but only a third of those were in the $90,001 to $180,000 tax bracket and a measly 27 per cent in the top tax bracket.  

The only high paying role which saw women with a higher median salary than their male counterpart was in politics. 

Female members of parliament earned just over $7,000 more than than men.