INTHEBLACK March 2025 - Magazine - Page 27
“If you’ve got a target with teeth — which means there are consequences
if you don’t deliver — you will be able to drive change.”
ANNIKA FREYER, CHAMPIONS OF CHANGE COALITION
CLOSING THE GENDER PAY GAP: BEHIND THE NUMBERS
The gender pay gap is a powerful aggregate
measure of progress in advancing gender
equality. In Australia, the gap is 21.8 per cent.
For every A$1 on average a man makes,
a woman earns 78 cents. Over the course
of a year, that difference adds up to A$28,425.
In New Zealand, the gender pay gap is
8.2 per cent, while in Hong Kong, it is 16 per cent.
In Singapore, full-time female employees aged
25–54 earn 14.3 per cent less than their
male counterparts.
In Australia, equal pay has been required by
law for more than 50 years. Mary Wooldridge,
CEO of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency
(WGEA), explains that it requires paying people
who are doing the same or similar jobs
the same amount for the work they do. The gender
pay gap, however, represents the difference
between the earnings of women and men.
“It reflects many more things than just pay,
and workplace composition is a big driver
of the differentials,” she says. “If you have an
industry where many men are in highly paid roles
and women are in lower-paid roles, you’ll have
a large gender pay gap, because it compares
all the different roles and looks at the average
or median remuneration, overall, as a proxy
for gender equality.”
It follows then that if the roles in which men
dominate were more available to women,
including leadership positions, this gap
could close.
In the accounting industry in Australia, WGEA
data shows women comprise 53 per cent of the
total workforce but 41 per cent of the top pay
quartile. For total remuneration, which includes
base salary and bonuses, superannuation, overtime
pay and other earnings, the gender pay gap for
accounting is 11.1 per cent. Only 15 per cent of CEO
or equivalent and 29 per cent of key management
roles are held by women, which goes some way
to explain the gap.
All private Australian companies with 100
or more employees are now required to make
public their gender pay performance data. For
the latest reporting period, all big four consulting
firms in Australia had pay gaps lower than the
national average.
intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au 27
