Government efforts to find and close pay gaps between men and women are showing tedious progress, new data suggests, as childcare and entrenched workplace practices prove stubborn obstacles.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency on Tuesday released its third iteration of the debate-prompting report, which makes public reams of supplied salaries from contracting firms with 100 employees to huge corporates such as Wesfarmers and BHP.
WGEA data released in November showed men in Australia are paid 21.1 per cent more than women based on average total remuneration, a gap that has been on a steady decline since 2013.
WGEA considers the gender pay gap to be the difference between the average or median remuneration of men and women, expressed as a percentage of men’s remuneration.
The agency advocates for workplaces to take stock of their pay gap and how it could be improved.
In the agency’s latest analysis, chief Mary Wooldrige was encouraged that almost all sectors – except education and training – had tightened the total remuneration pay gap between men and women.
An additional 300 employers out of 10,500 now sport what the agency considers to be an acceptable pay gap of 5 per cent or less compared with last year.
While many companies have seemingly been motivated to lift their game since “name and shame” reporting was introduced in 2024, meaningful progress has been slow.
WGEA’s latest analysis found that men are nearly twice as likely to be in Australia’s top paying jobs and women are 1.4 times more likely to be employed in the lowest paying quartile
The report affirmed factors that drive the gap, with highest paid gigs likely to be found in more labour intensive, masculinised industries such as construction, mining, and utilities.
Yearly total remuneration for a mining worker in Australia was about $202,148. Construction workers earn about $159,244 a year on average.
Financial services bucked the trend. Despite the sector being considered balanced by WGEA in terms of male and female employees, the heavy weighting of lucrative bonus and brokerage-driven roles skewed towards men.
The upper end of average total remuneration in the industry was the highest across the board at $323,593. The average annual wage was $169,992.
St Georges Terrace broking firm Euroz Hartleys was in the top 10 companies in Australia in terms of average total remuneration gap, with the likes of Jefferies, Canaccord Genuity and Morgan Stanley also ranking highly.
The report specifically called out discretionary payments such as bonuses and overtime hours as a key driver of gender pay gaps.
Setting the same expectations on men and women as to how they get bonuses and pay rises is viewed by WGEA boss Ms Wooldridge as a way to better align salaries.
“What the research shows is that men and women both advocate for their needs, but often the outcomes are different as a result of that advocacy,” she said.
“Making sure that things like performance evaluations, bonus considerations, remuneration decisions generally, are based on a much clearer framework of capability and contribution, rather than subjective measures that require individual advocacy in order to be recognised.”
Divulging salaries from previous roles can also inadvertently keep women’s existing salary benchmarks in place.
“(I’d) strongly argue that the question about what you’re getting paid … if you’re looking to change jobs should not be asked,” Ms Wooldridge said.
“It should be based on competency, not historical perspectives.”
Kathryn Daley, from the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University, said that pay transparency was also a crucial factor for levelling out earnings in the workplace.
“When employees know what everyone else is earning, it’s a neutralising force,” Dr Daley said.
Despite concerted efforts, childcare remains a stubbornly difficult social issue for many women’s ability to advance their careers at work.
“We’re seeing more and more of a shift to parental leave rather than maternity leave. It’s still mostly women that take it,” Dr Daley told The West Australian.
“The decision as to who’s going to be a primary carer often defaults to whoever’s earning more. Because if you’re going to lose one salary, you want to lose a smaller one.”
