On average, it takes women 14 months to earn the same amount that men earn in 12 months. Starting from the new financial year on 1st July, Equal Pay Day commemorates the day when women’s earnings "catch up" to men’s.

It’s almost 40 years since Australian women were officially granted equal pay for equal work by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.  Yet women still earn 17% less than men or one million dollars less over a lifetime.

While women are now more likely to have a tertiary qualification than men, women graduates will earn $2,000 less than male graduates and $7,400 less by the fifth year after graduation;

Fewer than 2% of ASX 200 companies have a female chief executive officer and only 1 in 12 board directors are women; and women retire with less than half the amount of savings in their superannuation accounts compared with men.

Our labour market and social structures continue to discriminate against women in employment. On one hand, women have access to unprecedented levels of education and employment. On the other, they continue to shoulder most of the unpaid housework and care of children with a critical lack of childcare services and flexible work practices, in most cases, to enable them to combine those two roles adequately.

We believe this inequity is not acceptable in modern Australia.

We look forward to the support of the Rudd government, employers and the community to achieve these reforms so our daughters don’t need to work an extra two months to earn as much as their brothers.

Rather than reporting the depressing statistics for one more year, the ACTU want this year to mark the start of a concerted effort to make real changes to achieve equal pay and employment opportunities for Australian women. The ACTU are establishing an alliance of organisations that aim to achieve equal pay and equal employment opportunities for women.

The ACTU in its build up to Equal Pay day on September 1st, has been seeking the support of women’s organisations to be part of an Equal Pay Alliance.

So far the Sex Discrimination Commissioner (fed); National Foundation of Australian Women; WEL; Work & Family roundtable, BPW; and a number of academics have signed up..

WEL is requesting support for their action to send MPs a red rose to highlight the gender pay gap and BPW are distributing red bags

Branches and Associated Bodies, should you be marking the day, can also easily take up the 'red' theme. A number of unions are holding morning teas and so on.

ACTU will also be doing some press around equal pay and the new alliance.

Please consider ‘celebrating’ on September 1 and if you are part of any women’s org’s not in this alliance, please encourage them to sign up.

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