A $26,000 gap between men and women: 8 things to know about the new pay and management data

There’s a $26,000 pay gap between men and women working full-time, according to the latest gender equality scorecard covering 11,000 employers and a massive four million employees in Australia.

That could buy you a lot of things — including a new car! More importantly, it could contribute significantly to your superannuation.

Pay gaps continue to exist in every industry and occupation, with the ‘financial and insurance services’ sector leading the pack at 31.9%.

That’s all according to new data released today by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, based on reports it received on pay gaps, workforce gender compositions and actions employers are taking on gender equality, in the 12 month period to the end of March 2017.

But while the pay gap continues to keep women earning less than men, it is at least trending downwards, and more organisations appear to be taking gender equality seriously.

The WGEA data found women now make up 38.4% of all managers – but we can also expect that figure to rise, with 43.4% of manager appointments in the reporting period going to women.

It’s the fourth year WGEA has been reporting on the data it collects, with the scorecard covering 40% of all employees in Australia, based on 4,621 reports submitted on behalf of 11,000 employers.

WGEA director Libby Lyons said that she’s encouraged by the fact more than half of reporting organisations now have formal strategies in place on remuneration and policies.

She’s also encouraged by the fact more employers are adopting “targeted strategies to support gender equality in areas such as succession planning, retention and promotion.”

A higher number of employers are also now reporting having key performance indicators for managers that are linked to gender equality outcomes.

However, Lyons said there is considerably more work to be done.

“Men still out-earn women by more than $26,000 on average, with pay gaps in every industry and occupation,” she said.

There’s lots of data in the Gender Equality scorecard, we’ve pulled out eight things to note.

1. There’s a $26,000 pay gap between men and women working full-time. The gap is 17.3% (or worth $16,183) when it comes to full-time base salaries, and 22.4% when considering full-time total remuneration (factoring in bonuses etc). It’s down from 19.9% and 24.7% respectively since the 2013/14 reporting period. So some, slight progress!
2. Gender pay gaps vary across industries and seniority. For ‘Key management personnel’ the gap is 24.9%. It’s 24% for ‘other executives/general managers’, 21.1% for senior managers and 22.9% for other managers. Those who classify themselves as ‘technicians or trade’ have a massive 26.7% pay gap. In sales it’s 23.9% and ‘clerical and administrative’ work, it’s only 8.4%.
3. Women’s representation continues to decline with seniority. But that’s changing. Just very, very slowly. Women make up 16.5% of CEO/Heads of business, up from 16.3% in the previous year. Women make up 29.7% of ‘key management personnel’ (up from 28.5%) and 30.4% of ‘other executives/general managers’ (up from 30.1%). Women make up 34.9% of ‘senior managers (34.1% in previous year) and 41.9% of ‘other managers’ (up from 40.8%). Overall women make up 38.4% of all managers, which when compared to the 2013/14 period, is up more than 3% from 35.9%.
4. … And women are getting promoted! Excellent! The report found 43.4% of managerial appointments, including promotions, were female, up from 42.6% in the previous year. So we can expect the upwards trend of women in more senior roles continuing – just don’t expect it to move too fast. And don’t expect much in the boardroom, where the proportion of female directors is still at 24.9%, up just 0.2%. Just 13.7% of chairs are women, up very slightly from 12.9% in the previous period
5. More employers are taking workplace gender equality seriously. Perhaps they see the business benefit, or maybe it’s the pull from WGEA. Whatever it is, the number of employers analysing their pay data for gender pay gaps increased almost 11 percentage points to 37.7% over the reporting period, while the number of employers with an overall gender equality strategy is up slightly (0.9%) to 71.5%. More employers also report now having a strategy or policy for flexible work, up 5.3% to 68.3%.
6. Managers are not working part-time. Indeed, just 6.3% of managers were found to be employed on a part-time basis. They may, however, be working flexibly.
7. Access to paid parental leave varies. Less than half (45.9%) of organisations are offering paid parental leave for primary carers in addition to the government scheme. Those that do offer it are usually large organisations with more than 5000 employers, and are offering an average 10.1 weeks. Women are still using 95.3% of all primary carer’s leave. Meanwhile, almost 40% of employers are offering paid parental leave for secondary carers, with an average length of 7.3 days. The number of employers saying they have a formal policy or strategy on family and caring responsibilities is up 5% to 62%, but those offering ‘non leave based measures’ to support parents (like childcare and breastfeeding rooms) is down to 51.9%.
8. Men continue to dominate full-time roles. 33.9% of the total workforce is made up of men working full-time and 20.1% of women working full-time. From there:
   1. 5.4% of the workforce is men working part time
   2. 10.7% is men working casually
   3. 16.4% is women working part-time
   4. 13.5% is women working casually.