Progress to close the gender pay gap appears slow and steady, but some of Australia's biggest employers are being called on to take more action to improve equality in the workplace.
Almost 5.9 million workers now have access to their company's latest pay gap information after the Workplace Gender Equality Agency published results for about 10,500 employers.
While the figures showed workplace pay gaps have shrunk since the previous annual report, more than half of employers still have a gender pay gap larger than 11.2 per cent in favour of men.
High-paying and male-dominated industries are more likely to have large gaps.
Men are nearly twice as likely as women to be in the highest-paid roles, while women dominate lower-paid jobs.
This should offer a reality check for people who believe Australia had achieved equality in the workplace, the agency's chief executive Mary Wooldridge said.
"Many employers are doing the work, drawing on the evidence, doing the analysis, working out what works and putting in place action plans to drive the change," she told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.
"But we do have a long way to go."
Gender pay gaps measure the difference between the average pay for men and women within an organisation, and can be used to gauge the differences in how their work is valued.
The construction sector has an average gender pay gap of 23.8 per cent, followed by financial services.
Large employers such as Qantas have been called out by the Australian Services Union for consistently reporting high gender pay gaps.
Qantas reported a 40.1 per cent average total renumeration gender pay gap in 2024/25 compared to a 39.2 per cent gap in 2023/24.
"The 40.1 per cent pay gap at Qantas is not an isolated incident; it is a glaring case study of a broader corporate culture that continues to fail women," ASU national secretary Emeline Gaske said.
"While executive boards talk about equality, the data tells a story of a systemic refusal to prioritise the economic security of the female workforce."
Large differences in discretionary payments, like performance bonuses and overtime hours, remain a key driver of many employer gender pay gaps.
Stephanie Mediero chairs the women's network at medical-technology company Medtronic, building leadership opportunities and promoting career advancement.
The playing field was particularly uneven between men and women in STEM fields, she said.
"Gender targets alone are not sufficient to close the pay gap; to move the needle we have to work on building the confidence of women in the workplace," she told AAP.
"When women have confidence in their skills and what they can offer, they are more likely to go for those leadership opportunities."
