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Australia – Mind the pay gap

25 November 2014

The gender pay gap in Australia is at its widest in the finance, engineering, and media sectors, where women are paid much less than men because they get smaller bonuses, reports the Australian Financial Review

Figures from mortgage firm Australian-first, reveal that women working at companies with 100 or more employees in the finance and insurance sector are paid -28.4% less in base salary than men. When bonuses and perks are taken into account, the gap widens to -36%.

Helen Conway, Director the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, commented: "What this is telling us is there are huge bonuses being paid and very few women getting them. And the problem stems from the fact that there are so few women in senior positions."

Legislation prevents the agency from disclosing details of how much companies pay. But the average male bonus in banking and finance last financial year was AUD 33,000 (USD 28,552) and AUD 25,000 (USD 21,630) for women, according to a survey by recruitment firm Lloyd Morgan.

At the lower management rungs, women make up nearly 40% of the workforce. That figure drops to 32% at senior management level and then steadily declines. Just under 30% of executives and general managers are women and 17.3% of chief executives are female.

Data obtained by The Australian Financial Review shows private companies outperform their listed counterparts when it comes to percentages of female managers. Among ASX 200 companies, 19.3% of positions that report to the chief executive are filled by women. The proportion within all companies is nearly 30%.

Ms Conway said Australia's comprehensive data to measure improvement was a "game changer".

"What absolutely jumps off the page at you is that so few organisations are taking a strategic approach to this problem. Only 7.1% of those who report to us have a stand-alone overall gender equality strategy," she added.

Women are paid less than men across all industries. In some sectors; such as government, education, and foods services, bonuses play a comparatively minor role in pay. However, across the workforce generally, the gender pay gap for base remuneration is 19.9%. That rises to 25% in terms of total remuneration when bonuses are included.