Gender pay gap data

The WGEA total remuneration average gender pay gap is 21.8%. For every $1 on average a man makes, women earn 78c. Over the course of a year, that difference adds up to $28,425.

This gender pay gap included CEO, Head of Business and Casual Manager remuneration for the first time in 2023-24. Without this pay included, the total remuneration gender pay gap would have dropped by 0.6pp year on year. 

WGEA's total remuneration gender pay gap includes base salary, overtime, bonuses and additional payments for private sector employees. It also includes the annualised full-time equivalent salaries of casual and part-time workers. This offers a more complete picture of the real remuneration differences between women and men in Australia. 

Employers report the salary data directly to WGEA as part of the Agency's annual Employer Census. Under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, all Australian employers with 100 or more employees must report their gender equality data to WGEA each year.

Using this information, WGEA also calculates a median gender pay gap. This currently stands at 19%. 

A ‘median’ is the middle of a set of numbers. A median gender pay gap is found by lining up the pay of every man in a business in order of smallest to largest and finding the middle number in that dataset. The same is done for the pay of women in that business. A median employer gender pay gap is the difference between the median of what a man is paid and the median of what a woman is paid within the organisation.

Read more about progress to end the gender pay gap in WGEA's Gender Equality Scorecard

Unlike the average, the median is not skewed by extreme values (CEO remuneration, for example), giving us a picture of typical earnings that exist within an organisation.

Across all employers: 

• 50% have a total remuneration average gender pay gap larger than 12.1%
• 50% have a total remuneration median gender pay gap larger than 8.9%. 

In women-dominated industries, the mid-point of average gender pay gaps is 5.5%. This increases to 13.2% in gender-balanced industries and 16.1% in men-dominated industries. 

The individual employer gender pay gaps for 2023-24 will be published on WGEA's Employer Data Explorer in late February 2025.  

The current total remuneration average gender pay gap for the Commonwealth public sector is 13.5%. On average, women employed in the Commonwealth public sector earn 86 cents for every dollar men earn. This adds up to women earning, on average, $19,007 less than men each year. 

In 2022, 50% of Commonwealth public sector employers had a gender pay gap larger than 6.9%. WGEA will release employer gender pay gaps for Commonwealth public sector employers in early 2025. 

Twice a year, WGEA also calculates the national gender pay gap using the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Survey of Average Weekly Earnings.

This data shows the base salary gender pay gap is 11.5%.

The gender pay gaps are different because of the way ‘pay’ is measured in the datasets.

The ABS data is base salary, for full-time workers. This means it excludes overtime, bonuses and additional payments. It also excludes the salaries of part-time and casual workers.