By Jerram Watts
The Government will today receive an invoice to the tune of $4 billion in unpaid wages to women from the Pay Equity Challenge Coalition.
The coalition says women are paid at least 12 percent less an hour than men and subsidise the economy by nearly $4 billion a year.
The statistics are taken from median hourly earnings from all wages and salaries, measured by the New Zealand Income Survey.
In 2007, the median hourly earnings for women were $16.78, compared with $19.11 for men - a 12.2 percent difference.
While the median hourly earnings for both men and women have increased in the last 12 years, by around $4 an hour, the gender pay gap has remained fairly constant with little downward movement.
Business and Professional Women of New Zealand president Angela McLeod says the statistics have barely changed in the last 10 years and from today, women will effectively be working for nothing until the end of the year.
She says women need to find out if they are paid less than they should be and start negotiating for pay parity.
However, between 1997 and 2007, while men saw the greatest dollar increase in median hourly earning ($5.70), women saw the greatest percentage increase of hourly earnings - a 43.6 percent increase.
Members of the Pay Equity Challenge Coalition will be dressing as debt collectors and invoicing the Ministry of Labour for $4 billion in unpaid wages at lunchtime today.
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