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When is equal pay not equal pay? When you fiddle the figures, of course. Debates around equal pay for women have been raging since the principle of equal pay for work of equal value was endorsed by the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1972. Although some initial progress was made in narrowing the gap between men's and women's wages, the gap is now widening again due to the effects of enterprise bargaining and the destruction of the award system. Getting a clear picture on exactly where women's wages stand compared to men's is not all that easy. Figures cited vary incredibly, from roughly 95% to less than 50%. The different figures represent manipulation of the available data. Which way the manipulation goes depends on who is doing the manipulating. At the top end of the scale is Keating, whose claim of 95% is a figment of his pre-election, trying to catch the women's vote, imagination. Keating claims women now earn roughly 95% of men's wages. This figure, however, represents only award rates for women and men in the same work. It is entirely misleading because it does not take into account above-award payments of any kind, or the ever increasing number of men and women who work under contracts under enterprise bargaining. Besides, if this figure represents award-fixed wages, it should be 100%. A second figure cited often in government documents, such as Australian Bureau of Statistics reports, hovers around the mid-80s. Women earn roughly 86% of men's wages when wages are calculated on paper earnings. That is, again, above award payments, overtime, loading for shift work and so on are not taken into account. This distorts the figures considerably. It has been well documented that payments of this nature are overwhelming received by men. A third figure is more realistic. When take-home pay is calculated, women in Australia still earn roughly 65% of men's wages. This represents very little change since the equal pay decision, but is a more honest figure which reflects men's dominance in payments above the basic wage and the difficulties faced by women in negotiating enterprise-based contracts that will deliver equal pay. A fourth figure calculates men's and women's wages taking into account all the unpaid work performed by women in the home. When this is done — a not unreasonable demand — women's wages fall to less than half of men's. This is the real picture for women's wages. So next time Keating, or Jennie George for that matter, claims women's wages are catching up with men's, or that women are better off today than we were a couple of decades ago, ask them which set of statistics they're using that day. By Kath Gelber