Question:
Discuss about the Gender Inequality and Taxable Income.
To a student of Master of Professional Accounting, the main interest is to become an accounting professional. In this study, the research topic is about the gender inequality and taxable income in different types of sectors in Australia. The first part of this report includes the research background, research aims and the literature review. In the second part, the research methodology, findings, discussions and conclusions are discussed.
Gender inequality can be defined as a situation in which men and women are not given equal preference. When a male member receives a treatment unequal to a female member, the problem of gender inequality arises (Giddenset al., 2016). Taxable income refers to the gross income earned by an individual or business organization on which payable tax amount is calculated (Blomquistet al., 2015).
There is a very high gender segregation in the labor market of Australia in terms of industry and occupation. A pattern of this gender segregation exists from the past ten years. From the ancient times it has been seen that the society is male dominated. Though the degree of domination decreased with time, still the male members dominate the society and the females are given less priority than the males in all respects (Sharma, 2016). In the event of getting a job in any specific sector, more importance is given to the males. Priority is also given in excess to the males in terms of payment. Women do not always get the job they are qualified for and get a job of a much lesser rank due to gender inequality. Thus, they get less payment as salary than the men.
Thus, it can be said that the inequality or gap exists on the basis of numbers, incomes and opportunities. Most of the sectors in Australia are dominated by males and thus they receive more opportunity and higher pay than the females.
The aim of this research is to find out the relationship between the gender inequality and taxable income in Australia and also to compare the gender gap in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) by choosing different fields of employment like accounting, finance, media, etc. Thus, the research objectives can be stated as follows:
It has been seen from various aspects that Australia still suffers from gender inequality (Lee Cooke & Xiao, 2014). The sex discrimination commissioner of Australia, Kate Jenkins has carried out a survey by interviewing over 1000 women while travelling to different states over a period of six months. Three areas in the Australian society mostly lacked gender equality (Siboniet al., 2016). These are the economic security of the society, leadership positions of the individuals and violence against women. Several people of Australia are against this gender inequality and wants to improve this problem. On the other hand, there are still some people who do not feel that this is a problem for Australia (Adapa, Rindfleish& Sheridan, 2016). The people of Australia are not working to rule out gender inequality at all. A large section of the people of Australia has the idea that gender equality has been achieved in Australia. Thus, there is no motivation among the Australian people to improve this problem.
According to studies developed by (Haynes, 2017), the participation of women in the accounting profession has been increasing considerably but it still has not exceeded the number of men. However, the management positions of the accounting professions are still predominated by men (O’Dwyer& Colic?Peisker, 2016). They also receive a much higher pay than the women. Moreover, undergraduate accounting courses are in high demand by the females, though the predominance of prevails in the specialization courses.
In another study conducted by Australia (2014), the participation of women in the accounting environment has increased considerably in the past 10 years. This increase in participation can be explained by the increasing number of admissions in the undergraduate accounting courses. Though there is growing participation of women in the profession, they are still provided with the assistant jobs and not the managerial jobs. Thus, the women are paid less than the men.
O’Reilly (2015) has conducted a research in which he studied the factors that can explain the work-life balance of the accountants. According to his findings, extra hours of work affects the work-life balance of people. Most of the female accountants work as assistants. Thus, their hierarchical levels are lower than men. This explains the higher level of performance in women.
According to history, there has been delays in progress of a firm with the inclusion of women in it. However, the participation of women in the labor market has been increasing considerably. Women have been offered careers with prestigious professions in posts such as management positions. Despite of this, there is a huge number of women who are still unemployed, have very poor work and are assigned for assistant activities (Haynes, 2017). Again, most of the leadership positions in the society are occupied by men. It has been assumed that women will not be eligible enough to lead the community properly. Men will be a lot better in working out at those positions. Though women had made huge progress in the managerial posts and the assistant posts, their access to the posts such as leadership is yet not that smooth.
According to some past studies, suppose a company has to promote some of its events or products. The person who will be selected for promoting it is male in most cases. A women is less likely to get such an opportunity due to lack of experience which is a result of gender inequality. However, nowadays, the companies are a lot aware of these situations and they hire women in higher positions. Thus, these types of problems are less likely to happen nowadays.
This discrimination between men and women is common in all types of industries and working sectors. Thus, it can be said that this discrimination can be seen in the accounting profession as well. According to a survey by O’Reilly (2015), women who have an average educational degree which is equal to that of men, receive an average pay less than that of men. This is a huge evidence for showing gender inequality. With all other factors such as size of the firm, years of serving the company, educational qualification and age of the employees being equal to men, it can be seen that the wages received by women is much lower than the wages received by men. This difference is clearly due to gender inequality or gender discriminality.
Studies have also shown that, though the number of women having accounting qualification increases, the quality of the women accountants are never taken into consideration. The companies try to hire more men than women because they think that a woman cannot be as much dedicated towards work as a man. This is because women always have family issues which men are least bothered about. Thus, the concentration of women is less than that of men in any work and hence their performance decreases. Thus, men are given more priority than women (Adapa, Rindfleish & Sheridan, 2016).
The main aim of this research is to study the gender inequality between a man and a woman in the society in terms of the taxable income received by them. To run this analysis, data will be needed based on which analysis has to be done and some conclusions will be made. In this case, the data has been collected from the official Australian government website www.data.gov.au. The data in his case is collected from a website and not directly from the field of survey. In fact, no survey was conductedin order to collect the data. Thus, this type of data is known as secondary data. The data in this website is publicly available.
The data has been collected from taxation statistics. In the website, this dataset is present under the title of Taxation Statistics 2014-15. The date of publishing this dataset in the website is 2nd of July, 2017. Thus, the time-period that is covered by the dataset is 2014-2015. The link from which the dataset will be available is given below:
Under this link, a lot of datasets are available. From all the datasets, the dataset that is relevant to this study has been selected. Thus, the dataset on individual taxable return table number 5 has been selected and found to be appropriate to analyze the gender inequality in the Australian society on the basis of the taxable income earned by the people in different industrial sectors in Australia.
The data collected from the government website is thus used for the analysis. The variables that are included in this dataset are quantitative variables. Number of individuals, taxable income of males, taxable income of females, all these are quantitative data. Thus, the dataset is a quantitative dataset. Since, all the variables involved are quantitative in nature, quantitative methods of analysis will be used to analyze the dataset statistically.
Quantitative methods mostly deal with the measurements and the analysis of the measurements statistically, mathematically or numerically (Babbie& Earl, 2012). The data collected in this case involves polls, surveys and questionnaires or by manipulating data already collected by some other sources and using them for the analysis (Muijs& Daniel, 2012). Explanation of particular phenomenon is the main aim of the quantitative research methodology. It is usually done by gathering the data and then generalizing it across the topic of interest.
The main aim is to establish a relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable. The research designs are of two main types – descriptive and experimental (Creswell, 2013). Relationship or association between two variables is usually shown with the help of descriptive statistics. Causality of the topic is established by an experimental study (Brannen, 2017). In this context, descriptive statistical measures will be used to analyze the data.
In the initial stage of analysis under taxation statistics 2014-15 there are many tables available related to different type of dataset. These all tables are on the basis of dataset of individuals, companies, trust, and partnership and so on. The individual tables are categorized from table 1- table 28. From all, individual taxable return table no. 5 is selected which provides the information of individual taxable income on the basis of different states and different type of industries in Australia.
Under the dataset of individual taxable return table number 5, many variables are available like number of individuals, taxable income, Medicare levy, gross tax number, net tax and many others according to the different states and sectors of Australia. For the analysis, ACT is selected and under this all different types of industries are selected for the analysis of taxable income of male and female. The taxable income of male and female is divided by number of male and female who file the tax for the purpose of calculation of average taxable income. The difference helps to analyze the inequality of male and female according to income.
It can be seen from the dataset that the number of females is less than the number of males in most of the types of industries. In industries such as retail trade, education and training, health care and social assistance, social services, more females are likely to be employed. There can be several reasons behind these. One of the basic reasons can be such that the companies do not consider women to be effective enough to serve their companies.
In the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries, the number of females working is less than half the number of males. Thus, it can be said that the companies think that women will not be suitable for the purpose of agriculture, forestry or fishing. Agriculture involves staying in the field all day and cultivating lands. Women might not be able to do that all the time. In the forestry industry, women cannot take care of the woods. According to the companies, it is out of their expertise. Fishing involves going down to the sea and catch fish. Women might be good in cooking and homely work. They will not be good in these outdoor works. Thus, it can be said that men are given more preference in these kinds of jobs. Again, it can be seen that the average taxable income that are received by women in this industry are less than that of men. Thus, the companies do think that women cannot perform all the duties that the company requires but men can. Thus they are paid a much higher salary than that of the women.
The manufacture industry also gives men priority than women. There are only 169 female employees in this industry whereas the number of male employees is 261, which is nearly double the number of female employees.
In a construction industry, the number of female employees (67) is considerably negligible as compared to the number of males (2321). Thus, it can be said that the construction industry assumes that women are not at all suitable for construction work. Those who are employed receive a very less salary as compared to the ales and hence the average taxation income of women in this industry is less than that of males.
In Wholesale trade, less females work than males. The number of females is half the number of male employees. According to the wholesale businessman also, this is not the right type of job in which women can show their expertise.
In the Retail Trade the number of women employed (430) is a lot higher than that of males (275). Thus, it can be said that the retail trade sector is suitable for women. On the other hand, coming in terms of average taxable income, male employees earn a lot more than the females. Thus, though more females are working in this industry, they are not provided with proper salary. This has resulted in the lower income in females. Thus, in this industry also women are not given priority over men.
In the case of other individuals, more women are there than men. In the top and lead industries men are given the highest priority in case of job and salary. Women are always downtrodden. They are not eligible for the jobs or for getting high salaries. Thus, most of the women run for being employed in small industries, names of which are not worth mentioning. Much of men do not work in those industries. Only the ones who do not get jobs in the top industries work for these small industries. Thus, the number of female employees is higher than that of men in these industries.
The average taxable income is higher in males than females in all the types of industries. Only exception in the taxable income section was shown by the accommodation and food service industry. This is the type of industry women are most comfortable with. Thus, the income of women in this industry is more than that of men.
Conclusions
Thus, it can be seen clearly from the above analysis that women are not given priority in any industry. The industries in which more women are employed earns an average income much less than that of males. The only industry in which women earn more than men is the in the accommodation of food services and the construction industries. In a construction industry, though women earn more than men, the excess is very less. Thus, their salaries can be said competitive. In the food and accommodation sector, women earn considerably more than men. Thus, it can be said that the society does prioritize men more than women and there is a presence of gender inequality in terms of taxable income of the people.
References
Adapa, S., Rindfleish, J., & Sheridan, A. (2016). ‘Doing gender’in a regional context: Explaining women’s absence from senior roles in regional accounting firms in Australia. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 35, 100-110.
Australia, G. C. (2014). An analysis of the gender wage gap in the Australian graduate labour market, 2013. Melbourne, Australia: Graduate Careers Australia.
Babbie, F & Earl, R. (2012). The Practice of Social Research. 12th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage
Blomquist, S., Kumar, A., Liang, C. Y., & Newey, W. K. (2015). Individual heterogeneity, nonlinear budget sets, and taxable income.
Brannen, J. (Ed.). (2017). Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research. Routledge.
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.
Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. P., &Carr, D. S. (2016). Introduction to sociology. WW Norton.
Haynes, K. (2017). Accounting as gendering and gendered: A review of 25 years of critical accounting research on gender. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 43, 110-124.
Lee Cooke, F., & Xiao, Y. (2014). Gender roles and organizational HR practices: The case of women’s careers in accountancy and consultancy firms in China. Human Resource Management, 53(1), 23-44.
Muijs, T. R. & Daniel, S. (2012). Doing Quantitative Research in Education with SPSS. 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications.
O’Reilly, J., Smith, M., Deakin, S., &Burchell, B. (2015). Equal pay as a moving target: International perspectives on forty-years of addressing the gender pay gap.
O’Dwyer, M., & Colic?Peisker, V. (2016). Facilitating the professional transition of migrants in Australia: does gender matter?. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 51(1), 47-66.
Sharma, N. (2016). Gender Inequality in Australia
Siboni, B., Siboni, B., Sangiorgi, D., Sangiorgi, D., Farneti, F., Farneti, F., … & de Villiers, C. (2016). Gender (in) accounting: insights, gaps and an agenda for future research. Meditari Accountancy Research, 24(2), 158-168.
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download
