For three years now, Australian employers’ gender pay gaps have been made public, with some shockingly high and embarrassing figures consequently available for everyone from employees to customers to see.
For some employers, the public shaming has been enough to push them into action, to get their boards talking, and even to commence programs to help chip away at the gap.
Other employers have attempted to explain away the gap, while others have simply ignored the option of such explanations altogether
As of today, 1 April 2026, Australian employers are required to go one step further: not only share the numbers with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency by law, but also publicly commit to a number of key actions.
Employers with 500 or more employees are required to commit to three actions and targets for achieving progress over the next three years. Employers have until May 31 to select their targets.
This marks a world first in mandating gender equality targets, with the targets to be “data-informed and purpose-led” according to WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge.
She said employers will need to understand workforce data, identify key drivers of inequality, and commit to actions that will deliver real change.
Wooldridge added that even when employers identify significant gaps and see them published, they’re still not taking sustained action that will make a difference.
These accountability measures mark the latest step in Australia’s efforts to address the gender pay gap.
First came the data, with the Workplace Gender Equality Mandate requiring employers to collect data from employees on areas like workforce gender composition, leadership, and pay.
Second came the transparency, with employees and customers shocked by the extent of the gender pay gaps in their companies or the products they purchased.
And now comes the action on those gender pay gaps, and the commitments to do better.
The lesson here is that while data is important for understanding the extent of a problem and how and where things are improving, it’s the accountability that really matters.
Part of that accountability is in the transparency and the public shaming that comes for some employers who find themselves having to explain their significant gender pay gaps. Now, accountability in terms of employers committing to take action, rather than merely offering an explanation for why their gender pay gap exists.
So today marks the next chapter in the consequences for Australian employers, with 2000 employers covering 3.9 million workers covered by WGEA’s new mandatory gender equality targets scheme.
These employers must select three targets from a menu of options to close their gender gaps, including better support for carers, improving board composition, and preventing sexual harassment. It’s not a perfect measure. It’s not something that will deliver guaranteed results. But it is a move that will push at least some such employers into action.
Those companies that achieve their targets may well benefit financially as a result.
As we shared on Monday, research highlights the business case for action, with a 2025 Gender Equity Insights report from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre and WGEA finding that organisations that prioritise gender equality report lower staff turnover, stronger women’s representation in leadership, and improved share value.
It’s also worth considering what this means in a global context, and perhaps even feeling a little pride that Australia has (so far) managed to hold at least part of the line on these measures from WGEA.
While there are calls for WGEA to push harder on accountability measures and also to dive into other areas of workplace equality, especially regarding cultural diversity, today’s move comes as obligations branded as “DEI” have been dismantled and ridiculed in the world’s largest economy, the United States. It comes as the European Union has been retreating from gender mandates, and as some employers in Australia have been quietly removing terms like “diversity” from their company reports. Just today, Women’s Agenda has reported that the Trump administration is suing a company for alleged discrimination, after the company held an all-women networking event for 250 employees in 2024.