The theme for 2025 International women’s Day on 8 March is “March Forward.”
As we mark the 30th year of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, globally inequality persists. Gender inequality remains deeply entrenched in many societies, evident in areas such as economic participation, political representation, and combating gender-based violence. Gender inequality is intersectional. It affects different women in different ways, due to race, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status or further aspects.
UN Australia states, “Since 1995, women have broken barriers, reshaped policies, and ignited powerful movements worldwide. But despite these advances, millions of women and girls still face systemic inequalities, rising violence, and economic disparities that hold them back from reaching their full potential.”
Minister for Women, Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher, said, “Australia is committed to leading the charge on gender equality. As our Beijing+30 Gender Equality Report to the United Nations shows, we have made significant strides, but there is still much work ahead to close the gender pay gap, ensure women’s safety, and fairly value both paid and unpaid care work.”
In Australia the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA)’s annual Scorecard is based on data from 7,414 employers covering the workplaces of more than 5 million employees. It shows that gendered patterns of remuneration at a national level and differences in workforce composition and remuneration between industries are two key drivers fuelling the size of Australia’s gender pay gap.
According to new results released on 4 March 2025 by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA),
- 56% of employers improved their gender pay gap in the last 12 months
- 79% of employers still have a gender pay gap outside the target range of +/-5%
- Just 1 in 5 (21%) Australian employers have an average gender pay gap in the target range of -5% and +5%,
The findings in this Scorecard highlight areas where employers and industries are making progress on workplace gender equality, as well as where more work needs to be done to drive change.
Employers are taking greater action on gender equality
There has been an increase in the number of employers who have undertaken a gender pay gap analysis, from 55% to 68% year-on-year. More employers (75%, up from 60%) are taking action on the results of their gender pay gap analysis. Of employers who are setting targets (45%), more targets are being set, with the greatest growth in the number of employers that set targets to reduce their gender pay gap (up 17pp to 59%), increasing women in management (up 9pp to 68%) and having a gender balanced governing body (up 11pp to 35%). More employers (up 5pp to 68%) are offering paid parental leave, and a greater proportion of parental leave was taken by men (up 3pp to 17%). More employers have a policy or strategy for employee consultation on gender equality (up 20pp to 51%) and more employers are consulting employees on gender equality (up 22pp to 69%), enabling them to better understand and address employees’ priorities.
CEO/HOB remuneration data highlights differences at the top
Women’s under-representation in executive roles also means that they are less likely to be appointed to boards, affecting the ability of the pipeline of candidates to enable gender diversity at board level, both now and into the future. Employers were required to report CEO, Head of Business (HOB) and Casual Manager remuneration to WGEA for the first time in 2023-24. The inclusion of the remuneration of these highly paid, generally masculinised, roles in WGEA’s gender pay gap calculations has resulted in an increase in the average total remuneration gender pay gap of 0.7pp, to 21.8% in 2023-24. This forms a new baseline for WGEA’s national gender pay gap calculations in the future. • The CEO/HOB gender pay gap is 27.1%, the largest of all manager categories. Even as women achieve the most senior levels of leadership in organisations, they are paid substantially less than their male peers. Only 1 in 4 CEOs/HOBs are women.
While there are more women CEOs/HOBs in women-dominated industries (44%) than in men-dominated (9%) or gender-balanced (18%) industries, this is still substantially less than their overall representation of 73% in those industries. Further progress is needed in all industries to achieve balanced representation of women at the most senior levels.
The gender pay gap reduced, excluding CEO remuneration, due largely to wage movements
In order to undertake a direct comparison of progress on the gender pay gap to last year, a comparison of this year’s result without CEO, HOB and casual manager remuneration was conducted. On that basis, Australia’s average total remuneration gender pay gap marginally declined, to 21.1% in 2023-24, a decrease of 0.6pp from 2022-23. 56% of employers improved their gender pay gap in the past 12 months and the number of employers with a gender pay gap within the target range of 0 +/- 5%, increased from 30% to 31%.
Drivers enabling a decrease in the gender pay gap
The main driver of the decrease in the gender pay gap in 2023-24 was the increase of wages for lower paid workers; in particular, Aged Care Residential Services, where women make up approximately 80% of employees, and to a lesser extent, Retail Trade and Accommodation and Food Services.
A secondary driver of the gender pay gap reduction was a greater increase in women manager’s average remuneration (up 5.9% from 2022-23.) compared to men managers (up 4.4% from 2022-23). While composition of the manager workforce has barely changed (remaining at 58% men), a greater wage increase for women narrows the gap between women and men’s remuneration.
There is scope for more focussed action by employers to reduce their gender pay gap, with only 45% of employers setting a target to address gender equality in their workplace and only 59% of them setting a target to reduce the gender pay gap.
WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge
“Over the past year, employers have told us that publication of employer gender pay gaps is a catalyst to assess gender-based differences in all areas of their workplace. For men, a more equal experience could mean their employer is providing access to paid parental leave, paying superannuation on that leave and actively supporting a flexible return to work from parental leave. For women, it could mean their employer is redesigning manager roles that will enable those roles to be undertaken on a part-time basis or as a job share. This action can create new pathways to career progression for employees with caring or other responsibilities outside of work, or by actively broadening the pipeline of talent across occupations and job roles. What is common to each is purposeful action that breaks down traditional notions of what it means to be a worker and carer in the contemporary workplace.”
A substantial gap remains
Gendered patterns of remuneration at a national level and differences in workforce composition and remuneration between industries are two key drivers fuelling the size of Australia’s gender pay gap.
When looking at the pay quartiles of the highest and lowest earners, we see that the top quartile has the greatest impact on the gender pay gap: men are much more likely to be in that top quartile and the remuneration of those highly paid men is generally greater than the remuneration of highly paid women.
Conversely, at the lowest quartile, remuneration of women and men is relatively similar, with a lower limit set by the national minimum wage. However, women are far more likely than men to be in the lowest quartile of earners. It is important to note that all industries have a contributing effect.
Each of the industry types makes a significant contribution to the gender pay gap through:
• Men-dominated industries (e.g. Mining and Construction) are highly remunerated and have a low proportion of women.
• Women-dominated industries (e.g. Health Care and Social Assistance), with a lower average remuneration compared to the overall average, bring down the average remuneration of women across the workforce.
• Some gender-balanced industries still have large differences in remuneration between women and men within the industry (e.g. Professional, Scientific and Technical Services and Financial and Insurance Services).
These drivers of the gender pay gap demonstrate that employers need to address both gender composition in the workplace, and remuneration and the value assigned to work in order to reduce their own gender pay gaps, as well as on a national level.
Explore the data
Read the full report and see the employer results against each of the Gender Equality Indicators at the link below:
2023-24 Gender Equality Scorecard (PDF, 3.85 MB)
