The Workplace Gender Equality Agency yesterday revealed Australia's latest national gender pay gap figures, showing that for every dollar men earn, women earn 78 cents.
Australia's total remuneration pay gap is 21.7 per cent, adding up to $26,393 per annum. The data comes from a legal requirement for all Australian companies with 100 or more employees to report their gender equality data, in place since 2012.
Importantly, the gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay. Equal pay - defined as women and men being paid the same for the same work, or different work of equal comparative value - has been a legal requirement in Australia since 1969.
Rather, the gender pay gap reflects the average or median pay difference across the whole workforce.
"Gender pay gaps are not a comparison of like roles. Instead, they show the difference between the average or median pay of women and men across organisations, industries and the workforce as a whole," the Agency said.
The average total remuneration pay gap of 21.7 per cent shows a slow yet steady decrease over the past decade, down from 28.6 per cent in the 2013-14 financial year.
Yet the data also shows that female participation in the upper quartile of roles is 35 per cent, and just 22 per cent at CEO level.
The report offers snapshots of results across different industries. A report on defence industry was not available, though viewing specific data from a wide selection of defence industry companies shows that the national pay gap is replicated on the whole, albeit with significant variability from single-digit per cent differences to over 30+ per cent.
ADM collects female workforce participation data as part of our annual Top 40 Defence Contractors survey: in the most recent survey, only seven companies reported female participation rates equal to or greater than 49 per cent. Whilst this does not reflect the gender pay gap within those organisations, it does show that the some contributing factors to the national average gender pay gap - such as female participation in upper quartile roles and at CEO level - are present in the defence sector.
55 per cent of Australian employers conducted a payroll analysis for this survey, and 60 per cent of those took action as a result.
The gender pay gap arises from: conscious and unconscious bias in hiring decisions; female-dominated industries attracting lower wages; lack of workplace flexibility to accomodate caring requirements; unequal shares of domestic work; and women's greater time out of the workforce for caring requirements, impacting career progression and opportunities.
This latter point is one of the main contributors to the gender pay gap globally. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency's survey revealed that just men take just 14 per cent of all primary carer parental leave, and only 63 per cent of employers offer employer-funded parental leave.
Meanwhile, Defence and industry continue to struggle with workforce shortages. It was recently revealed in Senate Estimates that the ADF is seven per cent (4300 people) under its current strength, despite plans to boost that overall strength by 18,500 people by 2050. Defence industry also reports similar difficulties in growing a skilled workforce: demonstrating the national security imperative of addressing female participation rates and the on-going gender pay gap.