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The difference between what men and women are paid at the biggest employers in Australia has been revealed for the first time: from brewers and builders to banks and bakers.
Data divulged under new laws show massive gender pay gaps at some of our most well-known businesses, including many where women are their key customers.
At brewer Lion, maker of XXXX, Tooheys and Four Pillars gin, the median base pay gender gap is just 1.4 per cent.
It is higher (8.4 per cent) if you include all forms of remuneration such as bonuses and penalties, but still far below the national average of 14.5 per cent and a sliver of those at some of Australia's biggest household names.
Sarah Abbott, a human resources executive at the brewery group, understands the challenge.
"There are a number of colleagues in other organisations who are very nervous for these announcements. And my advice would be start now: The sooner you start, the sooner you're going to be able to create change," she says.
That might be too late.
More than 5 million workers get to judge if what their employer says about gender equality — and does — match up.
ASX gaps
The median gender pay gap at airline Jetstar is 53.5 per cent, meaning that for every $1 a male worker makes at the company, women earn, on average, 46.5 cents.
It's scarcely better at Virgin (41.7 per cent), Qantas (39.3 per cent), the Commonwealth Bank (29.8 per cent), Westpac (27 per cent), insurer IAG (27.5 per cent) or Suncorp (20.5 per cent).
The figures in this article are based on "base pay". If you use a "total remuneration" figure that takes in penalties and bonuses, some gaps change. Jetstar's gap decreases to 43.7 per cent. Commonwealth Bank's increases to 29.9 per cent.
Companies have been submitting their data to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) for almost a decade, which created anonymised industry-by-industry reports and told companies where they sat in their sector.
Despite opposition from some business groups, the Labor government changed the law and led to this moment of radical transparency: the publication of the gender pay gaps at every company in Australia with more than 100 employees.
See below for the gaps at companies including supermarkets, football clubs, schools, healthcare providers, law firms and more — or your employer.
Work to do
Power giant AGL acknowledges it has work to do. It's one of many companies with a base salary pay gap (30.3 per cent) more than double the national average.
With a decade in the job — and distinctive rainbow-flecked hair — everyone at the Loy Yang power station in Victoria's Latrobe Valley seems to know Sarah Gilbert.
"I found that AGL in particular, there's always been a respect for people as they are rather than necessarily your gender or your cultural background," she says.
"It's always been about respect for the person."
The head of risk and assurance, she helps the company to comply with laws that govern the coal mine and power station.
Historically it has been a male-dominated field, but she's never felt uncomfortable.
"And I've never had to queue for the toilet," she says, laughing.
As the company tries to close the gender pay gap, it includes people like Ms Gilbert in leadership programs, attracting more female apprentices to the well-paid field, and having a commitment from the CEO down to changing the company.
"In the engineering space, we're seeing more females coming through. Certainly, in terms of our operators, we're seeing more females, literally at the coalface," she says.
"There's a really clear indication that, yeah, they're serious about it."
Complex gap
The gender pay gap — the difference between what men and women are paid in the same organisation — is a persistent problem.
WGEA, which collates the information, describes it like this:
"Gender pay gaps … show the difference between the average or median pay of women and men across organisations, industries and the workforce as a whole."
As Qantas notes in a statement, the figures show what's happening across the whole organisation:
From Qantas Group chief people officer Catherine Walsh:
"This does not mean women are paid less than men to do the same jobs at Qantas and Jetstar, but shows there is a significant under-representation of women in highly paid roles like pilots and engineers across airlines globally."
It is not about "equal pay for equal work".
Not equal pay
The fact that men and women should be paid the same for the same work has been enshrined in law for decades.
Any employer not doing that is breaking the law.
The gender pay gap is more complex and comes about through factors such as gender-dominated or previously segregated industries.
For example, teaching and "caring" professions have typically been dominated by women and paid much less than male-dominated fields such as construction.
Women are also more likely to have time out of the workforce to raise children or care for elderly relatives. Additionally, there is a history of gender discrimination against women and historic barriers to better wages and financial security, such as making up a higher proportion of part-time roles.
It's for these reasons that companies that are reducing their gaps have tended to do similar things: increasing the proportion of women in management roles, turning maternity leave provisions to "paternity leave" (and encouraging men to use it), and auditing where the lowest-paid roles in a company are.
'Significant step'
In a statement ahead of the release, WGEA chief executive Mary Wooldridge said workers being able to see inside their own companies was a "significant step forward" for accountability.
The figures will now be released annually, meaning the public will be able to see any improvement.
"We'll be able to see if the commitments they make and articulate in relation to their understanding of the gaps and what they're going to do about them translates into the outcome of reducing their gender pay gap," she says.
The public pressure from workers inside companies — and media coverage of the data — is part of the plan.
And it's worked elsewhere.
Worked in the UK
The UK government first published the information in 2017, prompting an explosive response as high-profile companies were forced to defend and fix large gaps between what they paid their male and female staff.
Airline RyanAir (a 72 per cent gap) and bank Barclays (44 per cent) were among the biggest. The data made a substantial impact in reducing the gap in future years.
Since publishing the broad data (2010) and the specific company-by-company information (2017), the gender pay gap has fallen by almost a quarter for all employees.
The reason?
Companies must submit their internal data to WGEA, with the submission signed off by a chief executive or person at a similar level.
At the same time, companies are invited to provide an "employer statement" to give context to their results.
For example, one of the reasons the airlines have large gaps is that the intake of pilots remains overwhelmingly male. Their well-paid jobs contrast with customer-facing staff at airlines who tend to be female and lower-paid.
As Virgin Australia notes in its statement:
"The 2023 median gender pay gap … of 41.7 per cent is driven by the demographic profile of our organisation. We have a larger proportion of men occupying higher paying roles, such as pilots and aircraft engineering roles … we are focused on improving the demographic profile of key roles across our organisation over time."
Insurer IAG makes similar points about its 8,400 staff.
"While IAG has a greater representation of women than men across our workforce, there are fewer women than men at senior career levels where role pay is typically higher, and fewer women than men in higher-paying roles," its statement reads.
"While recognising we have further work to do to achieve gender pay equity … we welcome the increased focus and transparency through WGEA publishing these important metrics and look forward to reporting on our progress in future years."
It is not compulsory for companies to provide the contextual information. Much of it has just been released and will be added to this article when it is made available. Companies mentioned in this article have been contacted for comment before publication.
The gap remains broad, even at companies that champion women.
Women undercut
Some of the most popular brands in Australia that sell goods largely to women have substantial gender pay gaps.
For every $1 a man makes working at the following companies, this is what a woman makes, on average:
- At retailer City Chic Collective, owner of City Chic and Avenue: 42.3 cents (gap is 57.7 per cent)
- At retailer Fast Future Brands, owner of TEMT and Valleygirl: 47.9 cents (gap is 52.1 per cent)
- At clothes chain Forever New: 49.9 cents (gap of 50.1 per cent)
- At jeweller Pandora: 52.8 cents (gap is 47.2 per cent)
- At swimwear retailer Seafolly: 55.5 cents (gap is 44.5 per cent)
- At active-wear retailer Lorna Jane: 63.7 cents (gap is 36.3 per cent)
- At clothing retailer Sussan: 73.1 cents (gap is 26.9 per cent)
- At accessory giant Lovisa: 73.6 cents (gap is 26.4 per cent)
- At chain store Decjuba: 79.1 cents (gap is 20.9 per cent)
All of these companies were contacted for comment.
Forever New pointed out the implications of having a 1,436-strong workforce where the vast majority were women working in retail stores, many in entry-level positions. There are just 65 male employees in the organisation, but 62 of them work in the head office which has larger salaries.
In a statement, it defended its result.
"As a brand, Forever New has policies in place to ensure equal remuneration between women and men and offers flexible work arrangements for females to continue to progress in their careers."
Further, it says 84 per cent of the best-paid quarter of its workforce are female "and women occupy 89 per cent of manager level roles".
Decjuba has a similar-sized workforce and an even starker gender split: it's 99 per cent female.
"The pay gap at Decjuba is skewed due to the small number of male team members, many of whom are in head office roles," the company said in a statement that listed policies on parental leave, flexible work and visa sponsorship.
"We are proud to have a balanced gender representation in our executive leadership team."
City Chic says three-quarters of general manager and operational manager roles are held by women, but it doesn't employ many men in its stores because of the nature of the product.
"City Chic is committed to gender equality in remuneration and, where appropriate, gender diversity in its employment practices. Given the nature of City Chic's business (plus size women's fashion), a limited number of roles are appropriately open to gender diversity, with the majority of its personnel being in customer-facing sales roles."
Shortly before publication, lawyers for Lorna Jane sent a letter threatening legal action if the reporting of its average total remuneration gender pay gap (37.1 per cent, higher than its base salary gap) did not place the figure "in proper context".
The letter from HopwoodGanim lawyers notes that at the time the data was taken, Lorna Jane employed 1,382 women and 47 men, with women making up 97 per cent of the workforce and the entire staff of its 101 stores.
"As part of Lorna Jane’s commitment to providing flexible employment conditions for its valued team, a very large number of its female staff enjoy being able to work in casual and part-time capacities. In contrast, the vast majority of Lorna Jane’s male employees work in full-time, non-retail roles."
As the gender pay gap reflects the difference in average earnings between women and men in the workforce, the tiny proportion of men working in Lorna Jane — all in roles outside of retail service — would grow the overall gap.
Brands including 2XU, Jenny Craig, Tupperware Australia and The Body Shop were published on a list of "non-compliant" employers which did not submit a report on time.
Consumers will choose
Silvia Salazar, a senior research fellow at the Bankwest-Curtin Economics Centre at Curtin University, cites the examples of FairTrade coffee and Rainforest Alliance certification for products as she thinks about the potential impact on some of the brands listed.
"If you are somebody that cares about gender equality, you are probably going to shop elsewhere if you see that the company that you really like is offering really low pay for women, has no women in management and so forth," she says.
It comes down to values: what a company talks about and what it does.
"You expect that a company that mostly caters for women will care also to have these women enjoy equality within their companies."
Dr Salazar describes it as akin to the issue of "greenwashing" — where companies market products or services as environmentally sustainable when they're not.
"You can have the same thing with this gender equality. I guess this publicly available data will show whether companies are actually doing what they said. Or not," she says.
Brewing change
A 2016 audit at brewer Lion exposed big gaps in how men and women were paid — and prompted action.
"We gave people changes to their base pay to say: 'What you're currently on isn't right. And we want you to be paid fairly for your role and your level'," says Ms Abbott, who runs the diversity, equity and inclusion function at Lion.
"That was done on the roles, positions that we recognised needed to be fixed.
"We needed to right the wrongs, draw a line in the sand and say: 'This is not okay on our watch'."
But the changes went further. The company banned discussion of previous salaries during job interviews and paid people according to the position they held.
"We don't want to bring on a poor behaviour that's replicated over (other) organisations into our own. So we pay for the level and the role, not for what the person was paid for before," she says.
With a gender pay gap now at 1.4 per cent, Lion is an example of both the work required inside companies that want to tackle the issue — and the change possible.
"We really welcome the opportunity for organisations to share their gender pay gap," Ms Abbott says.
"It's just basic equity. It's black and white. To me, I don't think there's any question around why and why not we should be doing it."
Froth and bubble
"What's not to love about brewing?" laughs Celsa Wilton, the brewing manager for Castlemaine Perkins, the iconic home of XXXX near the banks of the Brisbane River.
With a background in science, Ms Wilton was drawn in by the technical challenge of the process and now helps brew millions of litres of beer every year.
When she started 30 years ago she was the "first and only female at the table" but now has a team with a 50:50 gender split. Acknowledging that it hadn't been easy, Ms Wilton says it's now a point of pride that incoming staff don't experience a work environment dominated by one gender.
"There are so many advantages to trying to close that gender gap. Not because we've got a box to tick or a quota to meet, but you want that diversity in thinking in the brewery," she says.
"We can offer a different way of problem-solving, a different way of coming up with solutions," she says.
"There are so many benefits to having that diversity within any team."
A long list
Figures reveal the gender pay gap at some of Australia's biggest brands. Here are a few of the base pay gender gap provided to the government agency WGEA and published on Tuesday:
- Supermarket Woolworths: 5.7 per cent
- Rival Coles: 6 per cent
- Smaller rival Aldi: 5.3 per cent
- Department store Myer: 2.8 per cent
- Retailer JB HiFi: 1.9 per cent
- Parent company of carb-pusher Bakers Delight: 35 per cent
- Burger chain Grill'd: 12.5 per cent
- Optometrists Specsavers: 7.4 per cent
- Travel agents Flight Centre: 16.8 per cent
- Telco Optus: 13.5 per cent
Big banks, insurers
There's a substantial gap among the so-called "Big Four".
- Commonwealth Bank: 29.8 per cent
- Westpac: 27 per cent
- ANZ: 22.7 per cent
- NAB: 16.4 per cent
In a statement, the nation's biggest lender says the Commonwealth Bank has "a long history of promoting gender equality and working to improve the position of women in our workplace, and society more broadly" and has set clear public goals around its commitment.
"On an aggregate level, CBA has achieved gender pay equity on a 'like for like basis' – that is, men and women are paid equally for performing the same or comparable work. CBA's median pay gap calculated by WGEA reflects many factors influencing the gender pay gap more broadly, including the types of roles performed by women, the seniority of those roles and the composition of the workforce."
Women make up more than half (54 per cent) of the bank's workforce but 71 per cent of the lower-paid customer service roles in branches and call centres.
Westpac also pointed to its leadership in gender equality and its desire to pay people fairly.
"Our gender pay gap is heavily influenced by the shape of our organisation, with many women being employed in roles in contact centres, operations and our large retail branch network," a spokesperson said in a statement.
"Our focus is on improving the gender pay gap by increasing participation of women in senior roles as well as specialist areas such as institutional banking and technology."
- Bendigo and Adelaide Bank: 24 per cent
- Goldman Sachs: 32.7 per cent
- Barrenjoey: 33.8 per cent
- IAG: 27.5 per cent
- QBE: 24 per cent
- Bupa: 33.8 per cent
- Medibank: 17.8 per cent
Sporting clubs and associations
- Collingwood Football Club: 42 per cent
- Adelaide Football Club: 30 per cent
- Port Adelaide Football Club: 9.8 per cent
- Fremantle Football Club: 32 per cent
- Essendon Football Club: 23.1 per cent
- Richmond Football Club: 16 per cent
- North Melbourne Football Club: 2.9 per cent
- Wests Tigers Football Club: 4.8 per cent
- SANFL: 4.7 per cent
- Football Australia: 0 per cent
- AFL: 0 per cent
Healthcare
- Douglass Hanly Moir Pathology: 11 per cent
- Australian Red Cross Society: 10.4 per cent
- St Vincents Hospital (Melbourne): 6.6 per cent
- RSL Care RDNS: 0.9 per cent
- St John of God Health Care: -2.9 per cent
Miners, services
Rio Tinto has a negative gender pay gap, meaning women are, on average, paid more across the organisation.
- BHP Group: 18.9 per cent
- Rio Tinto: -2.3 per cent
- Hancock Prospecting: 25 per cent
- Inpex Australia: 24.5 per cent
- Woodside Energy: 16.1 per cent
- Thiess: 8.7 per cent