In Australia, the national gender pay gap of 12% indicates that on average, for every $1 men earn in Australia, women make 87 cents. Of course, this generalised figure doesn’t provide the complete picture. A breakdown of the gender pay gap amongst private sector companies gives a greater insight into the inequalities faced by women in various industries, while also holding these high-profile organisations to account.
Today the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has published the gender pay gaps for private sector employers with 100 or more employees for the first time, as required by the amendments to the Workplace Gender Equality Act passed in 2023.
In its newly-released data, the federal government agency compares employer gender pay gaps by industry, by the proportion of women in leadership, by whether employers operate in a male-dominated, mixed-gender or female-dominated industry and by the size of the employer.
What is the median gender pay gap?
WGEA has published the median gender pay gaps for these companies, but what does that actually mean?
“The median is the value that falls exactly in the middle of a set of numbers when arranged from smallest to largest,” states WGEA.
“The median gender pay gap is the difference between the median of what a man is paid and the median of what a woman is paid within an organisation. Unlike the average, the median is not skewed by extreme values at either end.”
How is the gender pay gap calculated?
There are a couple of factors taken into consideration by WGEA when calculating the median gender pay gap, and it’s all very dependent on remuneration information provided by the employers themselves in the 2022-23 Employer Census.
Part-time and casual salaries are converted into annualised full-time equivalent earnings. The data also excludes salaries of CEOs, Heads of Business, Casual Managers, employees who were furloughed, and employees reported as non-binary as this comparison is between women and men.
What is the median gender pay gap by industry?
The WGEA median total remuneration gender pay gap is 19% nationally – meaning that over the course of a year, the median of what a woman is paid is $18,461 less than the median of what a man is paid.
Of the 19 industry categories listed, the five industries with the largest median total remuneration gender pay gaps are:
Construction (31.8%)
Financial and Insurance Services (26.1%)
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (26.1%)
Information Media and Telecommunications (24.2%)
Transport, Postal and Warehousing (20.4%)
Meanwhile, Accommodation and Food Services has the lowest at 1.9%.
Every industry has a median gender pay gap in favour of men, and according to WGEA, “in industries with the largest reliance on bonus payments and overtime, the size and unequal distribution of bonus payments significantly increases the gender pay gap”.
What are the median gender pay gaps in major Australian companies?
When it comes to some of the big players in tech, the gender pay gaps include: Atlassian (18.1%), Canva (10.8%),Google (14.9%), Uber (6%), WiseTech (24%), Xero (11.4%) and Zipmoney (33.2%).
For the Big 4 accounting firms, the gender pay gaps are: Deloitte (16.7%), EY (15.4%), KPMG (13.7%) and PricewaterhouseCoopers aka PwC (3.9%).
Four well-known consulting companies have the following gender pay gaps: Accenture (17.5%), Bain (30.6%), Boston Consulting Group (35%), McKinsey (38.3%).
In banking, these companies had the following gender pay gaps: ANZ (23.1%), Commonwealth Bank (29.9%), ING Bank (32.2%), NAB (18.8%) and Westpac (28.5%).
Some of the major law firms fared as follows: Allens (9.8%), Clifford Chance (25.7%), Freehills (15.6%), King and Wood Mallesons (12.3%), Maurice Blackburn (30.7%) and MinterEllison (18.6%).
In the aviation industry, Jetstar's gender pay gap is 43.7%, Qantas' is 37% and Virgin's is 41.7%
And when it comes to sport, here are some gender pay gap figures in AFL that we found interesting: Collingwood (44%), Fremantle (33.9%), Geelong (25.0%), Hawthorn (2.0%), Melbourne (19.2%), Port Adelaide (9.8%), Richmond (12.5%), Sydney Swans (-4.3%), St Kilda (8.2%).
Digging deeper into employer gender pay gaps
In addition to the median total remuneration gender pay gap, WGEA has also published employer gender pay gaps data which “weights each private sector employer equally, regardless of their median remuneration amounts and number of employees”. The following stats are based on this.
What are negative, positive and neutral gender pay gaps?
Negative gender pay gap: Employers with pay gaps below -5% pay the ‘median woman’ more than the ‘median man’. These gaps are described as ‘in favour of women’.
Positive gender pay gap: Employers with a gender pay gap above +5% pay the ‘median man’ more than the ‘median woman’. These gaps are described as ‘in favour of men’.
Neutral gender pay gap: Gender pay gaps within and including –5% and +5% are considered neutral, meaning they do not significantly favour either women or men.
WGEA found that:
412 employers have a gender pay gap that favours women (<-5%)
1,493 employers have a neutral gender pay gap (within and including-5 and +5%)
3,057 employers have a gender pay gap that favours men (>+5%)
What are the employer gender pay gaps based on male versus female dominated industries?
When looking at the employer gender pay gap based on whether industries are male or female dominated, WGEA found:
2,481 private sector employers have a gender pay gap higher than 9.1%
630 private sector employers in female‐dominated industries have a gender pay gap higher than 2.9%
1,104 private sector employers in mixed‐gender industries have a gender pay gap higher than 10%
746 private sector employers in male‐dominated industries have a gender pay gap higher than 15.2%
You can access the WGEA Data Explorer here.