This week for The Catch-Up column, marketing extraordinaire and Taylor Swift superfan Emily Mann has something to say about gender pay gaps and the most powerful woman in the world. Want more of Emily Mann? Make sure you follow her on Instagram @mannpower_
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Two things happened on Tuesday.
Firstly, the world's biggest celebrity jetted out of Australia after a stellar run of seven concerts across two cities, including her largest ever audiences of 96,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, three nights in a row. The tour broke records at the end of 2023 as the first ever to gross over $1 billion, with another $1 billion expected by the end of 2024.
Secondly, the Australian Government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published base salary and total remuneration median gender pay gaps for private sector employers in Australia with 100 or more employees.
Across every sector of the Australian economy, men earn more than money than women. The median gender pay gap across the nation was 19 per cent, although the appallingly high 73.1 per cent pay gap at one employer takes the cake.
Am I disappointed? Yes. Am I surprised? Not at all.
To quote Taylor Swift, f**k the patriarchy.
Now, there's plenty of criticism levelled at Swift - that she's a maneater who writes whiny songs about boys, that she can't really sing or dance, that she's annoying and boring (the list goes on). And yes, there are legitimate criticisms that should be discussed and dissected.
So, if the world's most successful female music artist ever isn't immune to the constrictions, criticisms, and confines of the patriarchy, what hope does the average Australian working woman have?
- Emily Mann
She's an incredibly wealthy, thin and conventionally attractive white woman with immense power, privilege and responsibility. Yet, she reportedly has celebrity's largest carbon footprint, has a questionable political history, and her allyship to the LGBTQIA+ community sometimes feels performative.
All matters we don't have enough column inches to explore this week!
However, the fact of the matter is that Swift performs to both commercial and critical acclaim.
She's won 14 Grammy's, including four gongs for Album Of The Year; the first and only artist to ever achieve this.
In 2023 she was named Spotify's Top Global Artist, clocking an incredible 26.1 billion streams, and was also named Time Magazine's 2023 Person of The Year.
All this on top of The Eras Tour becoming the highest grossing tour of all time, with sell-out shows filled with girls, women, mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, aunts and yes, even boyfriends, husbands, fathers, and brothers all screaming (you guessed it) "f**k the patriarchy" along with Swift.
And yet, critics and cynics continue to roll their eyes and dismiss Swift as just another pop-star beloved by screaming fangirls, churning out hits and writing petty songs about famous ex-boyfriends.
It's a persistent and shallow take and frankly, it's incredibly misogynistic too.
It minimises her talent and achievements just because she is a woman who writes and sings about her experience of the world - whether that be love, life, business or fame.
So, if the world's most successful female music artist ever isn't immune to the constrictions, criticisms, and confines of the patriarchy, what hope does the average Australian working woman have?
Not a lot it seems.
As was confirmed yesterday by WGEA, Australian women earn on average $18,461 less per annum than their male colleagues.
Additional payments such as bonuses, overtime, superannuation, and commissions are more common (and lucrative) in male-dominated industries, and they most commonly benefit employees in the highest-paid roles, who are more likely to be men.
And whilst there's a clear link between more women in leadership and a lower gender pay gap, over one quarter of company boards do not have any female members, and men account for 65 per cent of the nation's top earners ($200k per annum), while women make up 60 per cent of the nation's lowest earners ($52k per annum).
After the age of 35 women are predominantly working part time or casually, and only 63 per cent of employers offer employer-funded parental leave.
And it's not good enough.
Siri, play 'The Man' by Taylor Swift.
