Policies to close the gender pay gap need to be developed in tandem with policies to reduce inequality overall, promote social justice and extend state support for working parents. When women are reliant on their own wages for subsistence, they often fall into poverty,1 not able to provide a decent standard of living either for themselves or their children. Women should have the same rights as men to develop their capabilities, but pay discrimination limits their choices and impacts on their lifetime earnings. Women's unpaid work responsibilities restrict their access to jobs and careers, and conversely unequal pay also limits the scope for individual families to change the domestic division of labour. Women may move from un paid care work into formal employment, only for new gender divisions to emerge within formal employment, or women may enter high-level and hitherto male-dominated occupations, only for gender divisions within the occupation to intensify.' However, there are some disadvantages in focusing too literally on this measure.