The gap between what men and women earn has narrowed but persists, with new research showing men are twice as likely to earn more than $120,000 a year than women.
Data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency released on Friday shows women typically earned about $25,000 less than men.
The overall gender pay gap continued its downward trend for the 2020/21 financial year, pegged at 22.8 per cent, meaning that for every $10 a man earned a woman would make about $7.72.
That's down by half a percentage point from the previous year, but the WGEA says it understates the true extent of the problem.
The pay gap includes super, bonuses and additional payments, but excludes salaries for CEOs and heads of business, 81 per cent of whom are men.
More than 60 per cent of women are employed in part-time or casual roles and their work is converted into "full-time equivalent" earnings for the sake of calculations.
"No matter how the gender pay gap is calculated, there is a consistent gap in favour of men," the report states.
The gender pay gap is not a measure of whether women earn less than men for the same job - that is pay equality and is a legal requirement.
Rather, the pay gap is an indicator of women's overall position in the workforce, representing how women and their work are valued.
While men were twice as likely to earn more than $120,000 a year, women are "substantially over-represented at the bottom level of all earners".
Australian National University senior lecturer in finance Anna von Reibnitz told AAP the report shows "how good Australia's data is".
"The amount that WGEA collects and the insights it can give is really world-leading, but it's showing that nothing's happening," Dr von Reibnitz says.
"The gap is still significant and we're not moving enough ... we've got this great data but we're not able to pull the levers to actually push for change."
The biggest gaps were in construction, financial and insurance services, and the professional, scientific and technical services sectors, which had pay gaps between 24.7 per cent and 30.6 per cent.
Some 73 per cent of organisations had gender pay gaps in favour of men, while 20 per cent had achieved parity and seven per cent had a gap in favour of women.
Companies are not being held accountable or forced to show change, and while WGEA collects the data, Dr von Reibnitz says the agency can only release it in an aggregated form.
The mandatory requirements that do exist for businesses are "really just to report whether there is a policy in place to improve gender equality in some domain ... you don't need to show whether you're doing anything about it ... it's a yes or no response," Dr von Reibnitz says.
Releasing the data would help employees decide where they want to work, investors where they want to put their money, and consumers where they want to spend, she says.
