Gender pay list reveals best and worst employers

Major companies including Qantas, Virgin Australia and the Macquarie Group have significant gender pay gaps, with 72 per cent of employers paying men more than women, a new national snapshot shows.

A new list reveals how companies compare on the gender pay gap.

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Major companies including Qantas, Virgin Australia, Sonic Healthcare and the Macquarie Group have significant gender pay gaps, with 72 per cent of employers paying men more than women, a new national snapshot reveals

Analysis of 7800 employers and 1700 corporate groups by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, to be released on Tuesday, shows half of employers have an average total remuneration gender pay gap larger than 12.1 per cent, with men earning, on average, $28,425, more than women each year.

However, the latest data shows some improvements, with the ­national median total remuneration gap falling from 19 per cent to 18.3 per cent.

For the first time, due to legislative changes, the WGEA has published average gender pay gaps and included remuneration of chief executives in the calculation of an employer’s gender pay gap.

Last year’s information was confined to median gender pay gaps, meaning a year-on-year comparison of average gender pay gaps will not occur until next year.

While the average gender pay gap is 21.8 per cent, the WGEA found 56 per cent of employers over a 12-month period reduced their average total remuneration gender pay gap.

Identifying the national mid-point, the WGEA said 50 per cent of employers had an average total remuneration gender pay gap above 12.1 per cent and 50 per cent have a gender pay gap below.

The mid-point of the median total remuneration employer gender pay gap is 8.9 per cent, a 0.2 per cent point reduction compared to last year.

Among significant employers, Virgin Australia had an average total remuneration gender pay gap of 45.2 per cent followed by Qantas on 41.2 per cent, pathology network Healius Ltd on 41 per cent, Premier Investments (36.8 per cent) Sonic Healthcare (36.2 per cent) and the Macquarie Group on 30.3 per cent.

In the banking sector, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac had average gaps of 22.4 per cent, while National Australia Bank came in at 19 per cent, followed closely by ANZ on 18.8 per cent.

Major companies that came in better than the national mid-point include Woolworths (10.5 per cent); Coles Group (6.1 per cent) Wesfarmers (11.8 per cent) and BHP group (11.2 per cent).

Breaking down the mid-point of employer gender pay gaps by industry, construction comes in on top at 25 per cent, followed by financial and insurance services (22.2 per cent), rental, hiring and real estate services (21.2 per cent) and mining (19.8 per cent).

Just 15.3 per cent of employers, equivalent to 1130 companies, have a median or average gap within the target range of 5 per cent. Of the $28,425 a year that men earn, on average, more than women, $11,204 comes from payments beyond base salary such as superannuation, overtime and performance bonuses.

WGEA chief executive Mary Wooldridge said the data showed progress to end the gender pay gap was occurring and the feedback from employers was that the issue was becoming embedded in their business practices.

“The challenge with this is that there is no silver bullet and there is no immediate couple of things that employers can do that fundamentally shifts it,” she said.

She said including CEO remuneration did not significantly impact the overall gender pay gap of 21.8 per cent across five million employees, as it would have been 21.1 per cent without CEO pay.

Women are 1.5 times more likely to be employed in the lowest remuneration quartile and men are 1.9 times more likely to be employed in the upper quartile.

Ms Wooldridge said more employers were conducting a gender pay gap analysis: “It’s promising to see the big increase in the number of employers working to understand what is driving their gender pay gap, beyond unequal pay.”

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