An extremely embarrassing day for some Australian businesses — and an enraging moment for many workers — is coming.
Early next year, the gender pay gap — the difference between what men and women are paid in the same organisation — of every company with more than 100 employees will be published.
Expect fireworks.
"I'll probably pop some champagne," laughs columnist and women's advocate Kristine Ziwica.
"This is a massive, massive shift and something that I have been waiting a very, very long time for."
Why? Because businesses haven't been open about whether they pay men and women fairly.
The data will let anyone look inside a business and decide if they want to work there.
Public transparency
Since 2012, private-sector employers with 100 or more employees have been required to report data about the gender gap among their employees to the federal government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).
There are more than 4.6 million workers covered by the data. But the WGEA has only published information about industry sectors, not individual companies.
For eight years, companies have received individualised agency reports about their pay gaps.
So, agency chief executive Mary Wooldridge says they should be acutely aware of both gaps and how to fix them.
"But we have seen a decline in the rate of reduction in the gender pay gap," she says. "It's stalled over the last two years at 22.8 per cent."
To get that moving, new legislation is forcing the publication of company-by-company data in early 2024.
"I think the transparency does focus the minds of business leaders and leaders in employers to do better," she says.
Better data
Employees will do better too. They'll soon be able to see to what extent most companies in Australia pay men and women differently.
"When I first moved to Australia about 10 years ago, I was absolutely baffled that the data didn't make it into the public domain," Ms Ziwica says.
"What that data does is it allows individual women to stick their head up above the parapet, to lock eyes with their colleagues and say, 'What? What's going on here in our place of work? What is happening here?'"
That resonates with Janin Bredehoeft, the chief executive of Science Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) and a former manager of research at the WGEA.
"I think this will be a huge tool for employees to say, 'Well, your gender pay gap is 'X'. Why would I go and work for you?'"
Beyond that, the data throws up broader questions that employees — in a tight labour market with low unemployment — will want to ask.
"Does your gender pay gap reflect the culture that you're in?" she suggests.
"Organisations now have a duty. What they really should do is say, 'What are we going to do in order to change it?'"
The UK has already been there.
UK already publishes company gender pay gaps
When the UK government first published the information in 2017 it was explosive, with companies forced to defend large gaps between what they paid their male and female staff.
They included well-known companies such as airline RyanAir (a 72 per cent gap), bank Barclays (44 per cent), publisher Telegraph Media Group (23 per cent) and consulting firm KPMG (22 per cent).
The data didn't fix the problem. But it did make a substantial impact.
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 UK's peak body for people working in human resources has been following the impact of the changes, and Charles Cotton sees the results as mixed.
“On the one hand, compliance in terms of reporting is very high and employers are better at calculating and reporting their figures correctly," he says.
But it might not be working in the way intended.
Businesses are allowed to publish reasons why they have a gap (a narrative) and their plans to fix it. That's falling away.
"The number of employers publishing a narrative and action plans to accompany their figures has fallen," Mr Cotton says.
Big splash
The transparency made headlines at the time, and continues to through the Gender Pay Gap Bot that tracks the difference between what companies say about gendered pay and what they're doing about it.
And that's a big part of what worked, according to Mr Cotton.
"As the data was public, it's difficult for employers to hide within their sector. Their stakeholders, such as existing or future employees, investors, and customers, want to know why the gaps exist and what actions the employer is taking, or plans to take," he says.
National, regional and industry-specific media also covered the story "quite extensively" Mr Cotton adds.
"So many well-known employers felt compelled to show that they were taking this issue seriously."
Shine a light
That heat will come to Australia, but the Ai Group, which represents big employers, is worried it won't be focused on creating a solution to the gender pay gap.
"We shouldn't have one," chief executive Innes Willox says emphatically.
While equal pay for equal work has been the law for decades, Mr Willox notes factors that contribute to a gap between what men and women earn.
These include:
- Gender-dominated or previously segregated industries, such as construction and nursing
- Women being more likely to have time out of the workforce to raise children
- The history of gender discrimination against women
"You might call it 'unconscious bias', but there has been a history there," he says.
"So you put those three factors together, and that does explain why we have a gender pay gap in Australia.
"Is that a problem that we have one? Yes. Is it understandable through history that we've got one? Yes. Is business trying hard to rectify that on a range of levels? Yes."
'Burning witches'
The Ai Group's initial submissions around the Australian legislation were against the publication of company-by-company data. However, it acknowledges the international evidence that transparency has helped shift the stubborn gap.
"The problem is it's going to be like the old 'burning witches at the stake' here because companies aren't quite at gender parity," Mr Willox worries.
"It may be, for some, a hard day. But it will help shift attitudes and draw attention to what has been a historical and, in some sectors of the economy, a cultural problem."
The plea from the business community is that the work being done by different sectors — for example, the construction industry's attempts to recruit more women — is acknowledged when the figures are released.
"What we would hope … is that there won't be a naming-and-shaming exercise and social media goes nuts and point to one company or another," Mr Willox says.
"But [rather] that there is a recognition underlying it that companies are trying to improve and to change the situation."
