Every day we still meet with passionate, well-intentioned leaders and executives who say all the right things about gender equality. They sponsor Women’s Day morning teas, they agree there is a problem in board meetings — and then the WGEA Gender Equality Scorecard lands and the numbers tell a very different story.
The 2024–25 WGEA Employer Gender Pay Gaps Report was published on 3 March 2026. It covers more than 10,500 employers and nearly 5.9 million Australians. There has been some progress. But there is also data that is, sadly, inexcusable — particularly in industries where women make up the vast majority of the workforce yet remain locked out of the top pay.
Here’s what people often miss: this isn’t about women being paid less than men sitting next to them doing the same job — that’s been illegal since 1969. The real issue is structural. It’s about who gets into the senior roles, who gets the promotions, and who ends up in that top pay quartile. Spoiler: it’s still mostly men.
The structural reality is stark: women make up half the workforce but hold just 22% of CEO roles and 39% of Key Management Personnel positions — and that leadership gap is what drives the pay gap far more than any like-for-like pay discrepancy.
First, Let’s Talk About the Numbers — Because There Are Two
I want to stop here and make a distinction that most media coverage glosses over — and it matters enormously for how you benchmark your organisation.
The WGEA data gives us two very different figures.
Mid-point: 11.2% down from 12.1% in 2023–24. This means half of all employers have a gap larger than this. Half have a gap smaller. This is the best measure of what a typical Australian employer looks like.
The Average Mean is 21.1% private sector mean — unchanged.
Women earn 79 cents for every $1 a man earns. Over a year, that’s a $28,356 difference.
Skewed upward by industries with extreme pay gaps — reflects where we still have a major problem.
The good news: the mid-point has dropped from 12.1% to 11.2% in the past 12 months. Progress is happening. But at this rate, we’re still talking decades before we reach genuine equality.
The Industries That Need to Do Better
Healthcare: Women Doing the Work, Men Taking the Pay
This is the one that makes my blood boil. Healthcare is one of Australia’s most female-dominated workforces — 78% women nationally — and yet the industry structure means highly paid specialist roles are overwhelmingly held by men, while the almost entirely female support workforce carries the operational load.
The healthcare industry mid-point sits at just 3.7% — which sounds good until you look underneath. Specialist medical practices can carry pay gaps of 50–70%+ with workforces that are 80–97% women. This is structural inequality laid bare. The sector urgently needs to address how specialist pay is structured and how women are supported into senior clinical leadership.
Retail: Women’s Brands with Male-Dominated Pay Structures
The retail sector presents its own particular brand of irony. The retail industry mid-point is 9.9% — but some of Australia’s most recognisable women’s fashion and lifestyle brands, with workforces that are 96–99% women, are reporting pay gaps of 44–52%. These brands are built entirely on women’s spending power, staffed almost entirely by women, and in too many cases, the pay still flows to men in senior roles.
Financial Services: Big Diversity Budgets, Bigger Pay Gaps
Financial and Insurance Services has an industry mid-point of 21.4% — nearly double the national mid-point of 11.2%. A striking 85% of employers in this sector have a pay gap above the national benchmark. The upper pay quartile is dominated by men; the lower quartile by women. Several firms’ gaps are widening year-on-year, despite high-profile diversity commitments. The numbers don’t match the press releases.
Coincidentally, we at Peeplcoach have had difficulty being able to break into this industry, whereas other male-dominated industries, such as manufacturing, technology, and construction, have been committed advocates, including Honeywell, Inghams Foods, and Bega Foods.
Construction: Still the Toughest Nut to Crack
Construction has an industry mid-point of 23.8% — the highest of any sector. Women represent just 21% of the construction workforce nationally, and only 10% in the upper pay quartile. Eighty-four per cent of construction employers sit above the national mid-point. Progress has been made — the mid-point dropped 1.5pp year-on-year — but this industry has the furthest to travel.
Proof That Investment Works
Sadly, over the years, we have seen too many “women’s programs” abandoned when budgets are tight, or they are left to be implemented by volunteers, usually women. All investments need ROI, and here are some facts. Gender-balanced executive teams add close to $93 million in company value for a $1 billion ASX-listed business (BCEC/WGEA, 2025), and globally, companies with the most gender-diverse executive teams are 39% more likely to outperform their peers financially (McKinsey, 2023).
One of our most compelling recent examples is Opal, a leading Australasian packaging group — and a Peeplcoach client — with an 82% male workforce. Thank you, Robert Tanti and Lani Dykes, for your advocacy and commitment.
Opal is committed to the Peeplcoach Amplify Program for Women Leaders for a cohort of ten high-potential women in middle management. In 2024, the results: 20% promoted within three months, 100% retention, and a second cohort launched in May 2025 and a third in March 2026. That’s what structured, sustained investment in women’s leadership looks like in practice — not a morning tea, not a policy document. Real development. Real outcomes.
5 Actions to Take Now — Not in 2030
1. Benchmark Against the Mid-Point, Not the Mean
Stop using 21.1% as your benchmark — that’s the mean, distorted by extreme outliers. The number that matters is 11.2% — the mid-point. If your gap is above that, more than half of Australian employers are doing better than you. That’s your real starting point.
2. Invest in Structured Women’s Leadership Development
Structured, resourced, consistent programs at scale. Not 1 or 2 women for 1 or 2 days. The tokenistic dipstick approach never works. The WGEA data shows that higher resignation rates for women are the single biggest factor pulling organisations away from gender balance. Structured development is how you fix that. And research shows that diverse organisations are more profitable.
3. Set Targets and Hold Leaders Accountable
From 2026, large employers must select and meet gender equality targets under new legislation. Don’t wait. Set targets. Link them to leadership KPIs. Be like Grant Thornton — track it, report it, hold yourself to it year after year.
4. Action: Invest in Parental Leave Coaching — Before, During and After
“WGEA’s own Ages and Wages research identifies age 34 as the critical turning point where the gender pay gap accelerates sharply — the age at which a manager becomes statistically more likely to be a man than a woman, with the earnings gap compounding all the way to $85,662 per year by the time women reach their late 50s. (WGEA, Ages and Wages, 2025)
This is not a coincidence. It is the age when most women are navigating parental leave, returning to work, and making career decisions under enormous pressure — often without any structured support from their employer.
The fix is not complicated. Structured coaching before, during, and after parental leave keeps women connected to their career ambitions, their confidence, and their organisations. It signals to women that their career is not on hold — it is still moving forward.
Again, shout out to the team at Opal who are now offering our Peeplcoach Parental Leave Program to all parents. Organisations that invest in parental leave coaching see higher retention, faster return to full-time roles, and more women staying on the leadership pathway past that critical age 34 threshold.
5. Track Why Your Women Are Leaving — and Fix It
Higher resignation rates for women are the single biggest factor pulling organisations away from gender balance. Start tracking exit data through a gender lens this quarter. If women are leaving faster than men, that is a signal you cannot afford to ignore.
Progress is happening. The mid-point dropped 0.9pp last year. But at that rate? We’re talking decades. Change requires action AND investment. The data is public. The bar is set.
