Australian employers are working to narrow the gender pay gap with improvements in the number of women in leadership positions and creating flexible workplaces.
Analysis by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency has found a 0.7 percentage point drop in the gender pay gap to 21.1 per cent, down from 21.8 per cent in 2024.
This means that for every $1 men earn, women on average earn 78.9 cents, adding up to a difference of $28,356 in a year.
However, in CEO salaries the gender pay gap at the top increased 1.2 percentage points to 26.2 per cent in the past 12 months.
Women chief executives earn $83,493 less on average than men in base salary, with the difference ballooning to $185,335 when superannuation, bonuses, overtime and additional payments are included.
The gender pay gap measures how men and women’s work is valued and shows their differences in earnings across organisations, industries and the workforce.
The agency’s gender equality scorecard for 2024/25 showed improvements in the number of women in leadership roles and on boards and in the upper quartile of earners.
The progress demonstrated employers were working to meet staff expectations of fairer workplaces for everyone, chief executive Mary Wooldridge said.
“Employers are shifting the dial towards fairness, which is helping to close the gender pay gap,” she said.
“Reductions to the pay gap and modest improvements towards gender-balance in leadership roles are underpinned by more employers having policies and taking action that can break down gender norms.”
When healthcare technology company Medtronic noticed its gender equity targets lagging, it decided to tackle the problem head on.
“We created a survey that went out to our female employee base which had a more than 50 per cent response rate, so we were able to collect some robust data,” senior regional sales manager Amanda Peirce told AAP.
“Nearly half our employees said they faced barriers to career progression.”
The company established a development program for female employees called EmpowerME, which was co-led by Ms Peirce.
It was designed to build confidence and visibility of women in all levels of the company with opportunities in skill progression, finance training and one-to-one coaching.
EmpowerME participant Amanda Cruz said the mentoring and coaching aspects were life-changing professionally and personally.
“I applied those learnings when I later led the cohort, had networking opportunities where I could meet with employees in the field, out in hospitals, contributed to award-winning initiatives and progressed in my career,” she said.
Now in its third year, Ms Peirce said the program’s results exceeded everyone’s expectations.
“We have seen female leadership go from 35 per cent to 48.5 per cent within the organisation,” she said.
“We’ve captured lots of data that shows increases in confidence, skills, promotion opportunities and career engagement in general.”
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