Qantas, Virgin and Macquarie say more work is needed for a greater gender balance across all roles

Some of Australia’s leading companies have hit back at any suggestion of a gender pay bias but say more needs to be done to ensure gender balance across all roles.

‘We take our obligations regarding equal pay extremely seriously and undertake a robust, like for like pay review process on an annual basis,’ says a chief executive.

Some of Australia’s largest and most recognisable companies have rejected suggestions that women were paid less than men to do the same job but said there was work needed to be done to encourage greater gender balance across all roles.

A report by Workplace Gender Equality Agency on companies with more than 100 employees, excluding the public sector, detailed a list of business where the pay gap was considered to be too wide.

A host of major companies including Qantas, Virgin, BHP, Woodside, Macquarie Bank and Santos have been revealed as having some of the highest gender pay gaps in the country.

Qantas chief people officer Catherine Walsh said women were not paid less than men to do the same jobs at Qantas and Jetstar.

But she said there was a significant under representation of women in highly paid roles like pilots and engineers across airlines globally.

“We are working hard to encourage more women into pilot and engineering roles particularly through our two academies, but the years of training required for these roles means improving the gender balance of these work groups will take time,” she said.

“We’re expanding our outreach into high schools to promote aviation as a career which hopefully results in more girls choosing subjects that put them on track to become pilots and engineers of the future.”

Across the Qantas Group, around 85 per cent of employees are covered by enterprise agreements which standardise pay levels regardless of gender. They were also working towards a target of 42 per cent women in senior leadership.

‘Years of training required for these roles means improving the gender balance of these work groups will take time.’

Telstra subsidiary Telstra Health also featured on the list and Telstra group executive, people culture and communications Kathryn van der Merwe said increased transparency was an important step towards pay equality and they welcomed WGEA’s report and the attention it has brought to Australia’s gender pay gap.

“Telstra’s gender pay gap, as identified in the WGEA report, is a result of having more men employed in technical, leadership or specialist roles, where market remuneration is higher,” she said.

“We’re confident that Telstra’s gender pay gap is a representation issue – not a pay issue. We don’t pay women differently to men doing the same work, and we know this because we regularly review like-for-like roles for gender bias in pay.”

Ms van de Merwe said they were committed to reducing the gap and would intensify their efforts to support more women to follow technical, leadership and specialist career pathways to increase the percentage of women in traditionally male-dominated areas.

A Virgin Australia spokesman said they were committed to ensuring all staff were equally valued and rewarded for the role they do and they supported WGEA’s report to promote and improve greater gender equality in the workplace.

“We support this work and the light that it sheds on this important issue,” he said.

“Our gender pay gap is driven by the demographic profile of our organisation. This sees a larger proportion of men occupying higher paying pilot and aircraft engineering roles.

“We have gender representation targets and supporting initiatives across our frontline and corporate work groups and we are focused on improving the demographic profile of key roles across our organisation over time.”

Hancock Operations chief executive Gerhard Veldsman said it was important the data is interpreted as an indication of the representation of women in senior positions and not misinterpreted as one querying equal pay.

“We take our obligations regarding equal pay extremely seriously and undertake a robust, like for like pay review process on an annual basis to ensure there is no pay disparity between women and men performing the same work,” he said.

Mr Veldsman said the WGEA data only represented a single point in time and does not recognise the efforts of organisations over a period of time.

“For example, since 2019, we’ve increased the number or women in the senior leadership by 50 per cent. “We’ve also deliberately focused on creating pathways for women into senior leadership positions by boosting the number of women supervisors and superintendents across our operations from 26 to 61 – a 134 per cent lift over the past four years.”