The release of data showing almost three-quarters of Australian companies pay their female employees less than their male colleagues is about “naming and shaming” the boss to do the right thing by women in the workplace.
What gets measured gets done, as they say, and some CEOs and HR chiefs will duck for cover on Tuesday as employees click online to check how big the gender pay gap is in their company – and how it compares to the national figure of 12.1 per cent.
But the report from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency covering the pay of 5.3 million workers is at risk of being ignored this year thanks to the Trump-led backlash against the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies that underpin this annual exercise.
The US President’s rubbishing of DEI has gained strong traction in the past few weeks and while he seems more worried about positive treatment of black and brown people, women have not escaped this campaign against corporate equity policies.
Suddenly it’s not necessarily a good idea to spruik your efforts to recruit more women or give them pay rises. Suddenly reports like this can be weaponised by critics as unwanted government intervention in the way a company runs its business.
Even before Trump, some critics have argued the WGEA report is of limited value given that for more than 50 years it’s been illegal to pay women less than men for equal work, happily ignoring that this report is more about composition of the workforce.
For others, the pay gap is real, but simply reflects the self-selection by women who don’t like maths or don’t want to work long hours in big jobs because they want to get home to their kids.
Maybe, but whatever way you cut the numbers – and the WGEA cuts and splices them to an often confusing degree – it’s undeniable that there’s an identifiable gap between the remuneration of Australian men and women at a time when there are no legal barriers against anyone doing any job.
Given that, on average, a woman takes home $28,425 a year less than a man, it’s worth looking beyond personal choices at the structural barriers or biases that underpin that difference. It’s worth having a crack at narrowing the gap and the WGEA exercise is just one lever that governments and advocates use to push for change.
The numbers tell a story and for some companies it’s not a good one – although overall they show an improvement, albeit incremental.
Whether this level of data is effective in getting companies to review their internal processes, and whether it’s worth the complex collection and analysis involved, are questions likely to be asked more openly as Trump tries to dewoke the world.
The data is useful for HR staff in companies that are keen to benchmark themselves against their rivals, but it’s not a silver bullet for action. One problem is which figures give a true picture of what’s going on.
As WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge says: “You could imagine the hours of debate we’ve had about which numbers to use and what’s the best representation.”
It was always going to be hard to compare last year and this year because of the inclusion this year of remuneration of CEOs and other top executives.
This allows for an average figure (21.8 per cent) based on employees to sit alongside the median figures that were highlighted last year.
But there’s plenty of room for confusion in a report which also serves up another figure of 12.1 per cent as a way of expressing the gap. That’s the midpoint of average total remuneration using the pay gaps in individual companies as the reference point.
So take your pick when you’re making the argument for or against the need for action on pay.
There’s also the problem that the data, which is for the 12 months to March 2024, lags the public naming of individual companies, which only began in last year’s report.
We will have to wait for next year to see if the “naming and shaming” approach forces companies to lift their game. Wooldridge is well aware of the Trump effect but says feedback from employers is that they have embedded policies in their businesses and will continue to report.
“Perhaps there’s a bit of a message that (they) mightn’t be so vocal in (their) advocacy but that’s not necessarily going to change what (they) do within the workplace,” she says. “But I suspect there may be some softening in terms of the communications, or the external publicity.”
The question, as DEI is questioned, is not so much whether a future government would seek to change the rules – the Coalition backed the WGEA and welcomed the report on Monday – but that companies may stop reporting, given there’s no real punishment for not complying.
(The WGEA can publish names of errant companies and they may not be eligible to tender for government contracts or some government assistance.) There’s more uncertainty about new legislation, stuck in the Senate, which would require companies to set targets for reducing the gap – and about which the Coalition has expressed concern.
Tuesday’s report does not offer a simple picture of pay, but as we head to International Women’s Day on March 8, it’s also clear that while we’ve come a long way since equal pay was granted in 1969, there’s still work to be done if we want that truly gender-balanced workforce.
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