The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has released its 10th edition of the gender equality scorecard. This looks at the pay inequity in Australia for the past year.

The latest report indicated an increase in female leadership at every level, except for the CEO. The proportion of women in CEO roles decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 22% compared to last year, while the overall number of women managers increased by 1 percentage point to 42%.

Female representation on boards remained unchanged at 34%. We last saw significant improvement in 2020-2021 when female representation rose 5 percentage points to 33%. It appears the impact of initiatives by the ASX Corporate Governance Council, the AICD, proxy adviser director election voting policies, ACSI’s 40 (women):40 (men):20 (unallocated) target advocacy (see HERE) is fading.

The complexity of pay gaps is probably still best understood by reviewing Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Prize-winning research (SEE HERE).

The WGEA report considers the gender pay gap and the causes behind it. The gap is defined in the WGEA report as “the difference in average earnings between women and men in the workforce.” This approach does not directly compare pay for men and women occupying the same positions or address equal pay, which by law, requires men and women to be paid the same amount for the same work. Instead, the pay gap would provide an indication of the positions of women in the workforce and their opportunities compared to men.

A summary of the findings and trends from the WGEA dataset can be found below.  Where, included, full-time, part-time, and casual employee remuneration, non-full -time roles are converted into annualised full-time equivalent earnings. This year is the first year WGEA has published median data, which provides further insight into gender wage gaps.

Gender pay gap

A national focus on gender equality coupled with a tight labour market driving employers to hire more women in management and higher income roles has driven the fall in the average gender pay gap.

The average total remuneration gender pay gap decreased 1.1 percentage points to 21.6% ($26,393) after stalling between 2021 and 2022. The last time a more than 1 percentage point drop occurred was between the first and second years of reporting ten years ago.

The median total remuneration gender pay gap per annum was 19.0% ($18,461).

The average base salary gender pay gap decreased 0.9 percentage points to 17.2%. The median base salary gender pay gap was 14.5%.

The higher average pay gap when compared to median indicates there is a disproportionate number of men in high-income roles exerting a greater impact than the women in lower paying roles. This supports our earlier comment the pay gap provides an indication of the positions of women in the workforce and their opportunities compared to men.

Managers versus non-managers

The average total remuneration gender pay gap non-managers was 18.1%, while for managers was 22.1%.

The median total remuneration gender pay gap non-managers was 14.7%, while for managers was 21.0%.

Sectors

The imbalance in high versus low paying roles drives the gender pay gap. The two industries with the largest gender pay gap are construction and financial and insurance services with gaps of 28.3% and 26.2% respectively. Compared to last year (2021-22), this is a decrease of 0.6 percentage points for construction and 1.5 percentage points for financial and insurance services.

The 3 industries with the largest median of the gender pay gap are construction, financial and insurance services and professional, hiring and real estate services with gaps of 31.8%, 26.1% and 26.1% respectively.

This is underscored by the figure below that shows male-dominated industries, like construction and financial services, have a higher gender pay-gap midpoint than female dominated and mixed gender industries. Astute readers will see the consulting industry is not carved out. However, recent media research cited median pay gaps of over 30%, In Guerdon Associates it is -13.6% in favour of women.

Flexible work

The support for flexible work arrangements continues increase reaching 84% (up 2 percentage points).

Parental leave

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has released its 10th edition of the gender equality scorecard. This looks at the pay inequity in Australia for the past year.

The latest report indicated an increase in female leadership at every level, except for the CEO. The proportion of women in CEO roles decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 22% compared to last year, while the overall number of women managers increased by 1 percentage point to 42%.

Sixty-three percent of employers offered paid parental leave (up from 62%), with 21% of universally available leave and 42% of primary carer’s leave.

Four percent of employers offered paid primary carer leave to women only.

Eighty-four percent of employers offered paid parental leave with time limits. Most employers (83%) have access limits of 12 months or less, while some employers (1%) are moving to increase the time frame to 24 months and beyond.

Support for carers

Seventy-two percent of employers had a policy and/or strategy to support employees with family and caring responsibilities, with 75% in mixed-gender industries and 69% in both male-dominated and female-dominated industries.

There was a 22 percentage point increase of employers providing breastfeeding facilities since 2018-19, reaching 60% in 2022-23.

Family and domestic violence support

Eighty-one percent of  employers have a family and domestic violence support policy or strategy, up from 73% a year ago.

There was a significant jump of 10 percentage points in employers providing access to paid domestic violence leave (up to 57%).

See HERE for the full report and HERE for the snapshot.

You can benchmark your company’s report against the national standards HERE.

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