Australia pay gap narrows, but ‘amazing’ $160,000 pay gap between men, women CEOs stalling progress

Australia’s gender pay gap may have narrowed slightly, but the country’s women CEO’s are being left behind as their male counterparts out-earn them by almost $160,000 on average each year.

The pay gap among CEOs was published for the first time as part of the government’s national pay gap scorecard to reveal that women working at the most senior levels of organisations were trailing men’s paychecks by 25 per cent.

The national gender pay gap has narrowed to 21.1 per cent (excluding CEO pay), an improvement on last year’s 21.7 per cent. This was helped by wage bumps in the aged care sector where four in five workers are women.

This means women earn 78 cents for every dollar men make.

Fresh insights into [pay gap at the leadership level were less promising, though, with women CEOs earning, on average, $158,632 less total remuneration than men. Including CEO figures, the pay gap stands at 21.8 per cent.

Representation of women on boards remained stubbornly low and even worse in male-dominated industries. According to the data, men represent 78 per cent of all CEOs in Australia.

Workplace Gender Equality Agency CEO Mary Wooldridge said the slight narrowing of the pay gap, overall, was positive and showed that publishing pay gaps of individual employers, which started earlier this year, was driving action.

“That’s been really positive,” Ms Wooldridge told AAP.

“We haven’t yet seen that flow through to big shifts in composition or pay, but that’s the exact work that needs to be done.”

She did, however, say she was surprised to see that women were still missing from “one in four governing bodies”.

She said it was “amazing” women were left out of the most senior positions “when we know the evidence base tells us that having a diversity of perspectives around the board leads to better decision making and better profitability and better productivity,”

Ms Wooldridge added that naming and shaming individual companies is also proving effective at pushing employers to root out the causes of their pay gaps and act on them.

Paid parental leave and other policies aimed at improving equity across caring responsibilities are some of the ways employers can chip away at their pay gaps.

The proportion of employers offering paid parental was higher compared to the year before, as well as the rate of men taking primary carer leave.

On Wednesday, the government will announce its intention to introduce new legislation to parliament to require organisations with 500 or more employees to make measurable targets to progress gender equality in their workplaces.