The story of pay equity in Australia is usually told in terms of the influence of wage setting institutions, and illustrated by the dramatic narrowing of the gender pay gap that occurred over the 1970s. The fate of pay equity since the 1980s has received much less attention, and indeed there has...

Since the 1970s Australia has been one of the few countries that has progressively advanced the concept of gender pay equity. This achievement has largely been due the centralised, industrial tribunal-based, wage fixing system. The wage rates created by industrial tribunals have been able to...