A new report released for International Women’s Day has cast light on how the gender pay gap in the workplace has ripple effects into the property market.
CoreLogic’s Women and Property: State of Play report, released yesterday, showed that women are behind men when it comes to property ownership, a fact largely attributed to long-term, institutional differences in pay.
“In terms of getting into ownership for women, we have this gender pay gap of around 13.4% in Australia for women,” said Eliza Owens, Head of Australian Research at CoreLogic. “Based on that, it would take women an additional ten months to save for a 20% deposit on average.”
“We also see relatively low ownership rates among sole purchasers, which also disadvantages women as they tend to be overrepresented in lone households or single parent households. The implication is that if it takes longer to get into home ownership, or they don't get into it at all, then they don't benefit from the wealth accumulation that it delivers over time. As we have seen in recent months, property can have rapid accumulation in value.”
This can be most starkly felt when workers retire, as owning their own home is often the key to avoiding financial worries once people stop working.
“I think that the main gist here is that in Australia and New Zealand, we have governments that are moving people to this idea of self-provision in retirement, and home ownership is a big part of that,” said Owens. “Because of differences in income, home ownership is not equally accessible for everyone, and with the gender pay gap, we see that disparity between men and women.”
“It's not just that there's the gender pay gap, it's that it takes longer to independently own property. As well as that, the lack of ownership has implications for their wellbeing later in life.”
“When it comes to retirement, it means that you might not have money to fund things like aged care or healthcare, but it also means that you could be faced with rental costs at a time when you're on the pension and your income is low. As a result, home ownership can define the difference between a comfortable retirement and a retirement in poverty.”
Fighting the gender pay gap is obviously a vital part of tackling structural discrimination, but it is not the only lever that can be pulled.
“One of the issues that this report highlights is that there's not just challenges for women relative to men, but there's challenges for women on low incomes relative to women on high incomes,” explains Eliza Owens.
“I guess just in general, providing more social and affordable accommodation for people on low incomes would benefit women, but in the long term it's got to be a narrowing of the gender pay gap that is ultimately going to lead to a narrowing of the gender wealth gap.”
“My speciality is housing, not welfare, so what I take from the report is that it's pretty much necessary to have more than one income to be able to afford home ownership. I guess from a housing perspective, we need to have some kind of scheme that can enable single parents or sole owners to get into the housing market more easily so that they can be financially independent.”
“Where we have seen the First Home Owner deposit scheme, maybe we could design a scheme for more vulnerable Australians, like single parents, that want to get into home ownership and, beyond that, supply more affordable accommodation even if that's just rentals.”
