Australia: The treasurer claimed the gender pay gap has closed. Job done! Except for the facts

Article here. Excerpt:

'Isn’t this, then, cause for celebration? Not really. As one of Australia’s foremost experts on gender and work, Professor Rae Cooper from the University of Sydney noted when the latest statistics were released, the reduction in the pay gap over the last five years has coincided with a period of “chronically depressed male wages”.

That is, a large proportion of the decrease in the pay gap can be attributed to falling average full-time incomes for men over the last five years – a result largely due to the collapse of employment in the mining sector, as the end of the boom and a rapid uptake of automation has seen high-paid jobs, disproportionately held by men, disappear.

For the treasurer to claim victory over a reduction in the gender pay gap that has largely resulted from lower incomes and fewer jobs for men sounds entirely the wrong note – and is clearly at odds with the prime minister’s statement on International Women’s Day this year that “…we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse”.'