Is this an improvement? Yes … but there is so much more to do with the clock ticking on public gender pay gap reporting.
WGEA’s annual update on the state of workplace gender equality has revealed a 1.1% decrease in the gender pay gap, now at 21.7%.
Mary Wooldridge, CEO of WGEA, said “This is promising as it signals that employers are increasingly prioritising gender equality as a core business measure and taking action to tackle workforce composition at the manager level.”
Promising, yes. But so much more to do given that women, on average, earn only 78 cents for every dollar men earn.
That is why we, at Equal Workplaces, fully support WGEA’s call to action - “If we want real change, we need employers to take bold action. We need employers to look across the drivers of gender inequality and be imaginative in their solutions.”
The new gender pay gap data follows a busy series of events in the gender equality space. We know you’re all frantically busy as the year-end closes in, and public gender pay gap reporting draws ever closer, so we’ve delved into this recent news with a gender pay gap lens to share what you need to know.
The Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce has reported.
Their long awaited report broadly examines the gender pay gap and notes the yet-to-be actioned Review recommendation to require “employers with 500 or more employees to commit to, achieve and report gender equality in their workplace” (p54). The Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce also recommends the Government strengthens “WGEA reporting obligations to include meaningful benchmarks against which to measure progress towards gender equality year-on-year” (p27).
The National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality is pending.
We won’t know whether the Government agrees with the WEET’s proposals until they release their National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality. The Strategy was originally pegged for 2023, but is now set for the first quarter of 2024. At Senate Estimates, Minister Gallagher described the WEET’s role as “feeding into” (p40) the National Strategy, which, she hopes, will make “a practical difference so that it guides Budget decisions” (p36). It will be very interesting to see which of the WEET’s recommendations are translated to government policy, how they are referenced in the Strategy, and how all of this materialises in dollar terms in the next Women’s Budget Statement on 14 May 2024. Stay tuned!
If you haven’t already, it’s time to talk to your Board about your gender pay gap.
As all employers of 100+ workers are all too aware, they are now required to report to their Boards on their gender pay gap. Momentum is moving to public gender pay gap reporting, and all the internal and external reputational risks that come along with it.
WGEA has recently released a guide on how to write and upload the employer statement that can accompany gender pay gap reporting. This statement will provide an important opportunity to position your report, and outline all the ways you are actively addressing your gender pay gap.
This is all building to a huge start for 2024.
We anticipate that International Women’s Day on 8 March provides an informal deadline for the Strategy and the public release of gender pay gaps, especially given its compelling “Count her In” theme which is all about “Accelerating Women’s Economic Equality”.
More transparent data = more actionable insights.
Based on data already collected so far, WGEA has identified a part-time promotion cliff, which reveals that 21 per cent of employees worked part time in 2022-23 but only 7 per cent of managers are employed part-time.
Many don’t realise that gender pay gaps are already public for Victoria’s public service. More recently, the Victorian Commissioner for Gender Equality in the Public Service has released a landmark “Intersectionality at Work” report, which draws on the data already collected in Victoria to examine compounded gender inequality. While the report makes for dire reading, we will leave you with one particular finding -
“the Commission’s audit data demonstrated that women with disabilities experienced large pay gaps when compared with men without disabilities, at 19% across all industries..” (p7)
The compilation and release of “Intersectionality at Work” is the first awareness-raising step to drive the positive change needed here.
In closing…
Gender equality in the workplace is proving to be a very busy policy space right now. It is fast-moving and will have a massive spotlight on it once the data is public.
If you want to get on board and make the changes needed to achieve more gender balanced workplaces, then get in contact. Equal Workplaces is here to help.