Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Government Services
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency has today published individual employer gender pay gaps for the second time, showing improvements on last year's results.
The new data covers 7,800 individual employers and 1,700 corporate groups, with over half improving their gender pay gap compared to last year.
Despite this positive progress, half of all employers still pay men over 12 per cent more than women and, nationally, women still earn an average of $28,425 per annum less.
A gender pay gap continues to exist across every industry in the country, with 83 per cent of employers in male-dominated industries showing a gender pay gap.
The public reporting of gender pay gap data provides an incentive for employers to take steps to address the gender pay gap.
After just one year of reporting individual employer data this incentive is clearly working, with an increase in the number of employers consulting their staff on gender equality (from 47 per cent to 69 per cent), as well as more employers conducting analyses of their pay gap (from 55 per cent to 68 per cent).
Despite this promising progress, it's clear that further reforms to accelerate closing the gender pay gap are needed, with important legislation currently before the Parliament which would help drive that needed change.
The House of Representatives has already passed legislation which would require large businesses to set targets issues such as gender pay gaps and workplace sexual harassment.
However, the reforms stalled in the Senate after Peter Dutton and the Coalition - who had previously supported the changes - refused to back sensible reforms designed to further tackle gender inequality and reduce the gender pay gap.
The reforms were a recommendation from the 2021 review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act, commissioned by the Morrison Coalition Government which then pledged to implement the recommendations.
The Dutton Opposition supported the recommendations as recently as 2023, but has since walked away from further reform to close the gender pay gap.
