Publishing employer gender pay gaps in 2025 FAQ

On March 4, 2025, WGEA will publish 2023-24 gender pay gaps for more than 7600 private sector employers and 1600 corporate groups.

They will be published in WGEA's Data Explorer and in a new Employer Gender Pay Gaps Report on the WGEA website.

WGEA will also publish the proportion of men and women in each pay quartile, as well as the average total remuneration for each of these quartiles.

Employers can choose to supply a link to an Employer Statement which provides context for their gender pay gap. It will sit alongside their gender pay gap on the Data Explorer. Details can be found in our Employer Statement Guide.

You can use the content menu on the left-hand side of this page to skip ahead to any specific questions you may have.

Watch WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge explain the upcoming release.

WGEA includes the pay of all employees in the calculation

WGEA’s employer gender pay gaps include the remuneration of all full-time, part-time and casual employees in the organisation. Where employees work less than full-time, these salaries are converted into full-time equivalent earnings.

How WGEA calculates the gender pay gap 

The CEO’s pay will be included in the calculation

WGEA’s 2023-24 employer gender pay gaps will include CEO remuneration for the first time, following legislative changes in 2023.

The inclusion of CEO remuneration will provide a more accurate representation of the gender pay gap. Almost 80% of CEOs in Australia are men and these roles attract the highest pay.

Average and median gender pay gaps

The inclusion of CEO pay means WGEA will publish average employer gender pay gaps for the first time in 2025.

The average gender pay gap is a good measure of the collective difference in the remuneration of a group. As the average is skewed by high and low salaries, it will show if earnings are particularly concentrated for one gender, for example, more men in higher earning positions.

The median is not skewed by high or low salaries. This means it gives a good picture of typical earnings that exist within an organisation.

New level of publication – corporate groups, subsidiaries, and standalone employers

In 2025 WGEA will publish employer gender pay gaps for corporate groups, subsidiaries of corporate groups and standalone employers with 100 or more employees. We will indicate where a subsidiary is part of a larger corporate group on the Data Explorer.

This is different from how WGEA published employer gender pay pays in the first round of publishing. If some or all of a corporate group’s subsidiaries have similar gender equality policies and strategies, these employers can report to WGEA as a ‘submission group.’  In 2024, WGEA published employer gender pay gaps for nearly 5,000 ‘submission groups’, to ease the transition to publication for employers.

In 2025 WGEA will publish gender pay gaps for more than 7600 private sector employers and 1600 corporate groups. This will enhance transparency of overall corporate group and individual subsidiary performance. But it will mean some employer gender pay gaps will not be comparable to last year.

Average remuneration per pay quartile

Pay quartiles divide employees into 4 groups, starting with the highest paid people in an organisation, through to the lowest paid.

In 2024, WGEA published the proportion of men and women in each pay quartile. In 2025, we will add the average remuneration for each pay quartile.

The combination of pay and workforce composition provides important insights into what may be driving each employer’s gender pay gap.

Diversity pay gaps beyond women and men

The Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 authorises WGEA to collect workforce data about women and men. For this reason, WGEA does not report on additional characteristics such as race, ability, or other gender identities.

Since 2021, employers have been able to voluntarily report workplace data they collect on employees who identify as non-binary. One of the recommendations of the WGE Act Review was that the WGE Act should be amended to enable the mandatory collection of this data. The Review also recommended investigating the best way to collect data on other aspects of identity including with employees of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, cultural and linguistic diversity, and disability. Work continues on these recommendations.

Partner earnings under a partnership organisation

In a partnership organisation the employer gender pay gap:

• includes the remuneration for all employees and includes salaried partners (i.e. partners with an employment contract)
• excludes a partner's earnings associated with the partnership.

WGEA is only authorised to collect remuneration data on employees. A partnership organisation is a structure made up of 2 or more people who distribute income or losses between themselves. Under this arrangement, partners are not considered employees for the purposes of reporting to WGEA.

Employers without partners can not be fairly compared to partnerships in their industry because in partnerships a proportion of their top earners are not included in their gender pay gap calculation. Partnerships who report to WGEA are most likely to occur in professional services, but can occur in other industries.

Employers can provide information about the influence of partnership earnings on their gender pay gap in their Employer Statement.

Recommendation 7.3b of the WGE Act Review proposed reporting on the remuneration of partners for the purposes of gender pay gap data. The government is considering this recommendation.

Overseas managers

WGEA only collects remuneration information on Australian-based employees. Where an employer has senior overseas managers based in Australia but reporting overseas who are more senior than the domestic CEO, their information will not be included in their gender pay gap.

Many people will want to compare employer gender pay gaps to understand how a particular employer is performing. Due to the changes in the data publication, we advise considering the following matters to ensure any comparisons are accurate and fair.

Negative, neutral, and positive gaps

WGEA considers gender pay gaps within and including –5% and +5% as an optimal target range. This range allows for normal fluctuations in the workforce. Employers with a gender pay gap in this range do not significantly favour either men or women.

Employers with a gender pay gap lower than -5% pay the median or average woman more than the median or average man. These gaps are described as ‘in favour of women.’

Employers with a median gender pay gap higher than +5% pay the median or average man more than the median or average woman. These gaps are described as ‘in favour of men.’

Average and median

When comparing gender pay gaps year-on-year, it is important to ensure you compare the median to the median. It is not possible to compare the average over time as this is the first year WGEA has published average employer gender pay gaps.

Similarly, when comparing employers or against national or industry data, ensure you use median or average exclusively. It is not accurate to compare an employer median gender pay gap to another employer’s average gender pay gap.

The industry mid-point

To understand how an employer is performing relative to their peers, we advise using the industry mid-point, which is reported on the WGEA Industry Data Explorer.

50% of employers in each industry will have a gender pay gap above this point, and 50% will have a gender pay gap below. Comparing an employer’s gender pay gap to the mid-point will help you understand whether their gender pay gap is in the higher, or lower half.

The national mid-point

To assess an employer’s performance on a national scale you can compare it with the national mid-point.

50% of employers have a total remuneration average gender pay gap larger than 12.1%. For median total remuneration, the employer gender pay gap mid-point is 8.9%.

Composition and remuneration by pay quartile

Analysis of both the gender composition and average pay for each quartile can reveal whether an employer’s gender pay gap is driven by gender segregation at a particular level and /or by significant differences in pay between the top and bottom levels. This can help identify areas of action for employers.

Progress over time

Due to the changes to report individually for subsidiaries and corporate groups, their employer gender pay gaps will not be comparable year-on-year. However, if an employer is a standalone organisation, it is possible to compare the median base salary and total remuneration gender pay gaps to last year. When this is the case, both the 2023-24 and the 2023-22 employer gender pay gaps will be shown on the Employer Data Explorer.

Comparing base salary and total remuneration

WGEA publishes both base salary and total remuneration employer gender pay gaps. Total remuneration includes the base salary, superannuation, bonuses, overtime, and other additional payments.

Comparing the base salary gender pay gap to the total remuneration gender pay gap will help you to understand whether one gender is gaining more benefit from these additional payments. Where this is the case, it may be helpful to assess whether there is any bias in performance bonus structures. Or whether this difference is driven by having more of one gender in the top income bracket than another (workforce composition).

Read the Employer Statement

Employers can provide a voluntary Employer Statement that gives context to their gender pay gap results and explains how they plan to take action. The links to these statements will appear alongside the employer gender pay gap and employers are encouraged to provide their link to WGEA prior to publication of the 2023-24 gender pay gaps. However, links can be provided or updated at any time.

Reading these statements will allow you to understand an employer’s commitment to improving their gender pay gap in future.

Australian employers with 100 or more employees lodge a report to WGEA containing information on the gender, pay and occupation of each employee annually.

This is a requirement of the Workforce Gender Equality Act 2012. For these reports, the employers select a snapshot date during the period of 1 April to 31 March. WGEA uses the information provided in these reports to calculate the employer gender pay gaps.

WGEA informs employers of their gender pay gaps when they complete reporting. The Agency provides this information in a report called the Executive Summary.

We also provide employers with an Industry Benchmark Report, which shows how their results compare to similar employers in Australia.

Legally, employers must provide both the Executive Summary and the Industry Benchmark Report to their board.

There are multiple reasons why you may not be able to find an employer’s gender pay gap, including:

• The employer may not be required to report to WGEA because it is
  • a state or territory public sector employer
  • an employer with fewer than 100 employees
• Commonwealth public sector employers with 100 or more employees are on a different reporting schedule and their gender pay gaps are expected to be published in April 2025.
• The employer’s trading name may be different to their reporting name. Try searching by the employer’s ABN. You can find an employer’s ABN on the Australian Business Register’s ABN Lookup page.
• The employer may be non-compliant under the Act. This means the employer has 100 or more employees, but it has not reported to WGEA. Try looking for the employer on our named as non-compliant list.
• The employer may be non-compliant under the Act, but not named as non-compliant. Not every employer who has failed to comply with the Act is named. When determining whether to exercise the discretion to name an employer, WGEA considers a range of factors. WGEA’s Compliance Strategy sets out how WGEA determines who to name.
• There are technical or data errors for an employer that have not been able to be resolved in time.
• The employer may be required to report to WGEA under the Act but has not registered to report.

Employers can self-publish their gender pay gap at any time. When they do, they choose the methodology and dataset they use to calculate their gender pay gap. This might be different to the approach undertaken by WGEA.

For example, an employer may have only published a like-for-like gap (Equal Pay), rather than a gender pay gap Or their published gender pay gap may cover a different date range.

The industry statistics included in the WGEA Gender Equality Scorecard and Data Explorer are based on all employers that reported before the cut-off for inclusion on 31 August.

A small number reported after the reporting deadline but before the Industry Benchmark Report is compiled in November. These late submissions are included in the Industry Benchmark Report to provide employers with the most up-to-date industry information, but this can also cause small deviations from the Scorecard and Data Explorer.

Note the IBR has a limited number of datapoints compared to the comprehensive Data Explorer.

Legislation requires WGEA to publish the first Commonwealth public sector employer gender pay gaps from reporting, related to data from the period 1 January to 31 December 2023. This means Commonwealth public sector employer gender pay gaps will be published for the first time in early 2025. 

State and Territory public sector employers are not required to report to WGEA. In December 2021 National Cabinet made an in-principle agreement for jurisdictions to report public sector workforce data to WGEA.

WGEA continues to work with States and Territories on an approach to gender equality data collection and reporting to WGEA.