For women with business qualifications and those in senior management positions, the figure was much higher at over 40 percent. APESMA national women's coordinator, Erin Wood said the preliminary report on the Women in the Professions survey will be released on March 28, 2007 at parliament house in Canberra. "One of the findings from our research is that female professionals are not getting any closer to bridging the pay divide," Wood said. "The trend over the past seven years has not changed. Our research has consistently shown that professional women do not believe they are being equally compensated for the work they do."

OECD reports substantiate our findings. The recent Gender Gap Index, ranked Australia 45th out of 115 OECD nations on wage equality for similar work. "It is very disappointing that this problem remains despite an acute skills shortage and high demand for technology professionals." Wood said the new industrial relations system impedes the resolution of this problem, as over 41 percent of respondents also indicated that they are not confident about negotiating good remuneration and working conditions with their employer.

"The role of government and industry will be to reverse this trend and to encourage women in the technology professions to remain in or to re-enter the workforce at a time of a skills shortage", she said. The survey, which was supported by the Federation of Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), supports similar findings released by Computerworld Australia magazine last year.

According to the Computerworld salary survey 2006, which covered 400 IT professionals in Australia, the average salary for a male IT professional is A$98,684 (US$76,600) compared to $81,906 for a female.

Currently in Australia women make up only 20 percent of the ICT (information and communications technology) sector.