Back in March, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) released gender pay gap figures for private sector employers. Now, WGEA has revealed data from more than 100 Commonwealth public sector employers, including broadcasters SBS and the ABC. While pay gaps are significantly better in the public sector than those in the private sector, there were still many public agencies and employers with large pay gaps favouring men.
The ABC pays men nearly 10 per cent more than women when median total remuneration is compared across the organisation, while SBS only had a 1.9 per cent pay gap.
The public sector broadcasters’ pay gap is smaller than Nine’s (15.3 per cent) and Seven West Media’s (11.5 per cent).
The Commonwealth public sector data adheres to a different timeline than private sector data, hence it’s release now rather than with the private sector data in March. The private sector data was mired in some controversy upon release, a matter B&T investigated at the time.
This marks the first time that WGEA has published gender pay gap data from the public sector. As a result of recommendations from the Respect@Work report and a subsequent bill, the WGEA’s annual data collection now includes expanded reporting requirements for Commonweath public sector employers.
An ABC spokesperson told The Guardian that it “has been conducting a regular gender pay gap analysis since 2019 to ensure we identify, understand and appropriately address any significant pay gaps across our workforce. Meaningful gaps which are found to occur at any pay band are investigated to ensure we understand the cause and can take any action required”.
“In alignment with our broader strategy, SBS has been working diligently to reduce the gender pay gap year on year. We are pleased to be significantly under the national median, however, we acknowledge that as workforces shift and change over time, this is a space that requires ongoing vigilance and action. We remain committed to gender equity in all spheres of our workplace and our work on this continues,” an SBS spokesperson told B&T.
Overall, pay gaps at Commonwealth public sector employers were significantly better than those in the private sector. The average total remuneration pay gap in the private sector was 21.1 per cent, more than triple the average public sector gap of 6.4 per cent.
Nearly half of all Commonwealth public sector employers had pay gaps in the target range of 5 per cent either way, compared with 31 per cent in the private sector.
When compared to the private sector, women and men have more balanced representation in the upper pay areas of the Commonwealth public sector.
Women also comprise 47 per cent of the highest-paid positions.
However, many public agencies and employers still had large pay gaps favouring men. These were largely found in mining, transport, finance and policing, comparable with the private sector.
The largest pay gap was 50.4 per cent at the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, meaning the median salary for a male employee was double the median salary for a woman; followed by the Coal Mining Industry Corporation (31.7 per cent), Civil Aviation Safety Authority (30.9 per cent) and Australian Maritime and Safety Authority (30.4 per cent).
Pay gaps at some of the largest commonwealth public sector employers included the Australian federal police (12.2 per cent), the Reserve Bank of Australia (11.5 per cent), CSIRO (11.3 per cent), Australia Post (8.6 per cent), the ATO (4.8 per cetn) and the National Disability Insurance Agency (0.7 per cent).
While equal pay for equal work has been the law in Australia for more than 50 years, gender pay gap data shows that men are often employed in higher-paid, more senior roles in a company.
“The public sector is not immune from the broader industry trends that we see, and they need to continue to be vigilant and work hard on addressing the areas where it’s not traditional to employ women, for example, in senior management,” Mary Wooldridge, chief executive of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency said.
“These results show very clearly that there’s still a significant amount of work to be done within individual agencies”.
