Men almost twice as likely as women to earn high salaries in ‘reality check’ on Australia’s gender pay gap

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s gender pay gap report shows men are 1.8 times more likely than women to be among the top quartile of earners. Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian design

Men are nearly twice as likely as women to be making $220,000 a year, with minimal progress made on closing Australia’s gender pay gap in the past 12 months.

The federal government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published its gender pay gap results for 10,500 employers on Tuesday. It revealed there was a slight increase in the number of women in highly paid roles, but men were still 1.8 times more likely to be in the upper quartile of earners on an average salary of $221,000.