Top-tier Australian female managers earn $93,000 less than their male counterparts, according to a report released today analysing graduate positions up to senior level management roles.
Top-tier Australian female managers earn $93,000 less than their male counterparts, according to a report released today analysing graduate positions up to senior level management roles.
However, the report found the introduction of gender-balanced leadership teams had the potential to reduce this disparity.
Gender Equity Insights 2017: Inside Australia’s Gender Pay Gap presents 2015-2016 data from 12,000 organisations across the country accounting for more than 4 million employees.
The report was produced by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre in collaboration with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.
It found the median full-time gender pay gap among graduates was 2.9 per cent on base salary (from $1,620 to $1,813), with women consistently under-represented in the highest graduate salary bands.
For full-time key management personnel, women earned 26.5 per cent less ($93,000) per year than their male counterparts based on total remuneration – an average of $258,431 versus $351,678.
On base salary alone, these women earned around $54,000 less (21.5 per cent).
The report also found a measurable link between a gender-balanced leadership team and reduced gender pay gaps, suggesting that increasing the representation of women in senior leadership positions was associated with lowering gender pay gaps.
And organisations with a balanced representation of women in senior leadership roles had reported gender pay gaps of 10 per cent on average – about half the size of those with the least representation of women in leadership.
Report co-author and BCEC director Alan Duncan said the finding presented the strongest empirical evidence to date that companies promoting greater gender equity in senior leadership roles improved gender pay outcomes.
“Organisations that increased the share of women in executive leadership roles by more than 10 per cent between 2015 and 2016 recorded a reduction in the organisation-wide gender pay gap of three per cent over the course of a single year,” Professor Duncan said.
In contrast, businesses that reduced the share of women in leadership by between 5 per cent and 10 per cent experienced a gender pay gap increase of 0.5 per cent.
For part-time employees, non-managerial women earned 7.8 per cent (around $4,000) a year more than men.
However, at the senior, level part-time female managers earned on average 27 per cent less than their male peers, with a wider gap of 34.7 per cent in female-dominated work environments.
Once the management environment across the board became more dominated by women (beyond 80 per cent) the gender pay gap among managers increased from 8 per cent to 17 per cent.
WGEA director Libby Lyons said the analysis was clear – gender-balanced workplaces and gender-balanced leadership teams lowered the gender pay gap.
“This report shows that regardless of the industry they choose to work in, women are worse off than men when working full-time,” she said.
Mining was revealed as the most-male dominated industry in Australia, but also delivered the highest pay to women – on a full-time basis these women earned on average $139,053 total remuneration in 2016, with men earning $165,148.
Electricity, gas, water and waste services was the next top-paying industry for women at $106,1000, however men received $132,674.
Women employed in financial and insurance services ranked at third at $105, 438, where male counterparts earned $157,794.
Retail trade was revealed as the lowest paid industry for women at $65,865.
The most female-dominated industry was health care and social assistance, where women earned $80,026 on average and men, $93,830.
