By Leonora Risse
Since 2024, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has been publishing the gender pay gaps of Australia’s largest companies. Now, we have enough data to make some meaningful comparisons – and this public spotlight seems to be paying off.
This week, the agency released its latest employer gender pay gaps report. Drawing on this data, my calculations show the average gender gap in total pay fell from 13.1 percent to 12.7 percent between 2023-24 and 2024-25.
That’s based on more than 7000 organisations that provided their numbers for both years.
While the gender pay gap narrowed in more than half of these employers, driving the overall improvement, it still widened in about 45 percent.
There are signs that companies are, on the whole, heading in the right direction. But gender pay gaps still overwhelmingly favour men. There’s still work to do – especially at Australia’s major banks and airlines.
Still far from ideal
Overall, this week’s release gives us data on 10,500 employers and 5.9 million workers in the public and private sectors.
The WGEA has a target gender pay gap range of -5 percent to +5 percent, suggesting an employer doesn’t significantly favour men or women.
Only one in five private companies covered in today’s release fall into this range, compared to roughly two in five Commonwealth public sector employers.
Around seven in ten private employers have a gender pay gap that favours men. And many are still far from the ideal range: a quarter of private companies have a gender pay gap of 20 percent or more.
Several employers have a gender pay gap in favour of women, but they make up a very small share of the overall picture: only about 7 percent.
Companies’ scorecard
Of the ten biggest companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), banking giant Macquarie Group reports the largest gender pay gap, at 29.6 percent.
The Commonwealth Bank follows with a gap of 21.3 percent, while ANZ and NAB have gaps of 18.4 percent and 18.1 percent, respectively.
Among the largest private employers with the biggest gender pay gaps are airlines Qantas and Virgin, with gaps of 40.1 percent and 45.1 percent, respectively. This is partly due to the gender mix of jobs within this sector, with women comprising only a small fraction of the highest-paying occupations.
This occupational segregation is a common picture across Australia’s workforce. And it continues to fuel the overall gender gap in earnings.
Men are 1.8 times more likely to be in the top 25 percent of earners (where the average total annual pay is A$221,000). In contrast, women are 1.4 times more likely to be in the bottom 25 percent (where the average is $60,000 a year).
The public sector leads the way
For the first time in WGEA’s reporting, public employers’ gender pay gaps are available alongside those of private companies.
The average gender pay gap for Commonwealth public sector employers was 7.5 percent for 2024-25. This is a little over half that of private employers, at 12.3 percent.
Among the Commonwealth public sector employers with the largest workforces, the Australian Federal Police report a gender pay gap of 11.5 percent, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a gap of 7.3 percent and Australia Post is at 6.5 percent.
Among public organisations within WGEA’s target range, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has a gender pay gap of 4.3 percent, Services Australia records a gap of 3.9 percent, the Australian Taxation Office is at 3.7 percent and Treasury sits at 3.4 percent.
Actions to speed up progress
Pay gap transparency was legislated as part of reforms to the Workplace Gender Equality Act in 2023. This was done in response to progress on gender equality stalling in Australia’s private sector.
These reforms put the onus on leaders and employers – rather than individual women – to take responsibility for addressing gender inequities within their workforces.
The public spotlight is prompting more intentional action by employers. Around two in three employers are now conducting a gender pay gap analysis.
Shining a spotlight
Among employers who crunched the numbers at their own organisation, half detected the causes of the gap and a quarter were prompted to review their performance system to check for, and undo, gender biases.
Roughly a quarter of all employers covered in the report have a target to reduce the gender pay gap.
Evidence from other countries shows that pay gap transparency leads to a narrowing of the gender pay gap, but it’s through men’s pay rising less quickly rather than women’s pay growth speeding up.
This can bring potential risks such as an erosion in morale and productivity among workers: women come to learn how much more their male colleagues earn, while men face the prospect of their future wage growth being curbed.
The pitfalls of ‘greedy jobs’
Discretionary payments – such as bonuses, overtime, penalty rates, shift and leave loadings – are a big driver of the total pay gap, especially in fields such as finance.
When we strip out these extra payments, along with superannuation, and look only at base salaries, the average size of the employer gender pay gap falls to 10 percent in the private sector and 6.5 percent in the public sector.
This should prompt employers to review their discretionary payments, to ensure all workers have access to these opportunities and are rewarded fairly.
It also prompts us to guard against the harms of “greedy jobs”, where long hours are rewarded with bonuses and higher overtime pay.
It’s this type of analysis, matched with evidence-based action, that pay gap transparency is aiming to achieve.
Leonora Risse is an Associate Professor in Economics at the Queensland University of Technology. This article was first published by The Conversation.
