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Nearly three-quarters of firms have gaps that favour men

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Finance, mining and construction sectors have biggest gaps

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Some 56% of firms reduced their pay gaps

By Alasdair Pal and Christine Chen

SYDNEY, March 4 (Reuters) - Australia's gender pay gap

has narrowed slightly but women are still paid nearly a fifth

less than men, with the finance, mining and construction

industries showing the biggest differences, a government report

found.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency survey also showed that

72.2% of employers had a gap favouring men while 21.3% had a gap

within the target range of +/-5%. The rest had a gap that

favoured women.

The median pay gap for the year to March 2024 was 18.6% in

favour of men, compared with 19% in the previous year. Some 56%

of companies reduced their pay gaps.

"Where an employer's gender pay gap is beyond the target

range of +/-5%, it indicates one gender is more likely to be

over-represented in higher paying roles compared to the other,"

the agency's Chief Executive Mary Wooldridge said.

Large listed companies with big pay gaps in favour of men

included the country's top investment bank Macquarie Group ( MCQEF )

with a gap of 41.8% and gas producer Woodside

with a gap of 25.6%. Woodside showed an improvement from 30.2% a

year earlier while data was not collated for Macquarie

previously.

The large gaps remain despite both companies having female

chief executives.

Asked about the gap, Macquarie CEO Shemara Wikramanayake

said the firm did not want to push female employees into senior

roles before they were ready.

"It's going to take as long as it's going to take," she told

the Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Tuesday.

"We're not going to force females into senior roles. I think

that would be counterproductive."

Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill said the firm's hiring had been

gender balanced for several years.

"The size of the workforce is so large... it's going to take

time for those women to get into the workforce, to work their

way up to positions of greater seniority," she told the same

conference.

Thomson Reuters ( TRI ) Australia, the local

subsidiary of Reuters' parent company Thomson Reuters ( TRI ),

reported a median pay gap of 25% in favour of men, a 3.5

percentage point improvement on the previous year.

A spokesperson for Thomson Reuters ( TRI ) said the gap was a result

of greater gender imbalance at both the lower and senior levels

of the company.

Australia passed legislation mandating the reporting of

gender pay gaps for companies with more than 100 employees in

2023, following other countries including the United

Kingdom that have mandatory reporting.