WGEA’s Ages and Wages report shows how the gender pay gap impacts women and men at different ages, and how employer interventions at critical times can reduce the gap and improve the ability of women to earn and save for retirement.
It also provides insight into how those same actions could address growing concerns for men, including the lack of flexible work options, a work culture of long hours and unequal access to parental leave.
The information included in the report comes from the annual Employer Census, lodged to WGEA by 7,414 employers in 2024.
It offers an insight into the experience of more than 5.1 million employees across Australia in 19 industries.
Download the full report as a PDF
Change the story. Shape the future.
Employers want their workplaces to be fair, equal, and safe. But the persistence and compounding impact of the gender pay gap throughout a woman’s lifetime shows something in the way we work is not working for women.
Unintentionally, some policies, actions, expectations of women and men or ‘the way we do things around here’ are also are limiting men.
Ages and Wages finds a key turning point occurs around age 34 where the gender pay gap accelerates.
Critical drivers of this acceleration include:
a lack of part-time manager roles
assumptions not backed by evidence that full-time workers are more committed to their jobs or more productive
bonus and overtime systems that favour men
recruitment and promotion processes that perpetuate the gender pay gap.
The report reveals the key actions employers can take today to make work fair for both women and men. Taking at least one this year could make your workplace fairer.
The key actions that employers can take to improve inequality are:
Offer part-time or job-sharing manager roles to both women and men.
Price roles against market value instead of asking candidates about their previous salary.
Address assumptions in pay negotiations.
Review performance bonuses and overtime strategies to remove bias.
Offer parental leave equally to women and men and make it opt-out.
Set targets for gender-balance, not just for women.
Explore the Ages and Wages data
Women entering the workforce in their teenage years earn slightly more than men of the same age.
But by the time they are in their 20s, men begin to earn more.
The gender pay gap in favour of men peaks between the ages of 55 to 59, when there’s a $52,000 difference between what men and women earn, on average.
The lifetime financial impact for women of this persistent gender pay gap is substantial.
The industries Australians work in change by age
Both women and men are most likely to have their first job in Retail or Accommodation and Food Services.
From age 20, Healthcare and Social Services becomes one of the main industries that employs women.
Education becomes a more dominant sector from the time women graduate university in their late 20s and early 30s.
Men's employment is more spread out across the range of industries available from their early to late 20s.
Interestingly, manufacturing is more likely to employ older men than younger men and women.
This may reflect the fact that manufacturing was the largest industry when these men were entering the workforce.
But this is no longer the case.
This pattern of work and employment by age could shape the type of jobs offered by employers, for example, many of the casual workers in Retail Trade and Accommodation and Food Services are young and may prefer roles with casual loading while they pursue other careers and further education.
Age 34 is a critical point for gender equality
The Australian workforce is gender balanced. 51% of employees are women and 49% are men.
Non-manager roles are just as likely to be undertaken by women as they are by men until retirement age.
However, women in many workplaces face challenges accessing management opportunities.
From age 34, a manager is more likely to be a man.
Manager roles represent 11.2% of available roles in the labour workforce. Access to these roles is one way employees can increase their remuneration.
The average total remuneration for a manager is $214,974. The average total remuneration for a non-manager is $103,267.
Manager roles are more likely to be held by employees who are aged 30 or older.
Over time, men gain more exposure to management and leadership teams.
This exacerbates the financial and opportunity impacts for women. Known as the ‘sticky floor effect', it keeps women from moving to manager roles that lead to higher incomes.
The way we work doesn't always fit life
A key reason for the ‘sticky floor effect' is because women are more likely to work part-time.
In fact, the proportion of women in any age group working full-time barely exceeds 50% in any age group.
In contrast, the majority of men work full-time from the age of 25 until retirement.
The number of women working part-time peaks around the ages 35-39, just as more manager roles become available.
This also correlates with the age when many women and men are caring for children.
Notably, the average age of a first time mother is 29.9 and the most common ages are 30-34 years.
The average age for a first time father is 33.7, with the most common ages 33-34.
Often, due to the pay differentials of parents, mothers are more likely than fathers to forego their full-time employment in order to invest their hours to care for children.
Manager roles are more often full-time for both women and men.
In 2023-24, only 7% of management roles were part time.
Women are more likely to work part-time as managers than men.
The rate of full-time work for women managers is at its highest between 25 and 34. However, we know that manager roles are rare at this age.
Between the ages 35 and 44 the proportion of women managers working part-time increases as many women may reduce paid working hours to invest time in unpaid caring.
There is no corresponding reduction in paid working hours for men at this same age. From age 25 –through to retirement more than 93% of men managers work full-time.
Women managers earn less than men at every age
Women managers earn less than men at every age.
The gender pay gap for managers widens rapidly to a peak between the ages of 55 to 59, when women managers earn $85,662 less than men managers, on average.
Women in non-manager roles also experience a gender pay gap in every age range.
The smaller size of the gap is due to the lower wages offered in these roles.
Bonus and overtime culture is driving a gender divide
The bonus and overtime gap between women and men grows rapidly from the age of 30.
Women aged between 50 and 54 earn $18,190 less each year, on average, in bonus or overtime payments compared to men.
This gender pay gap in discretionary pay is not explained by manager status. Amongst non-managers, women receive less than men in discretionary payments at almost every age group.
When discretionary payments are calculated as a percentage of an employee's total remuneration, the gender pay gap in discretionary pay is actually greater for non-managers than managers.
The impact of inequality at work
Women’s unpaid labour enables men to undertake full-time higher-paid jobs during the parenting years.
While this sets men up to earn more across their lifetime, it limits women financially.
A report by the Super Members Council found that, because of these compounding factors, women retire with a third less superannuation than men.
This underscores the financial impacts of the gender pay gap.
After all, the cost of housing and other essentials such as groceries are the same for everyone, but the gender pay gap means women have less purchasing power and therefore, may be more vulnerable to financial stress in later years.
This also means that fathers may feel more pressure to be working and earning to make up for the gap, which in turn may leave less time for engaging in caring for family and loved ones, or for leisure time.
Key actions to make your workplace equal
Evidence shows the following interventions could help improve workplaces for both men and women.
Offer part-time or job share manager roles
Research suggests employers may believe that full-time employees are the ideal worker. They may perceive part-time employees as less productive or less committed to their careers but there is no evidence to suggest this is true.
Offering manager roles part-time could improve women’s access to management and men’s ability to connect. It could also help both women and men transition to retirement. But employers rarely offer management roles part-time.
Job sharing is one way employers can offer part-time manager roles while still having the benefit of work being done full-time. In 2023-24 65% of employers offer job sharing as a form of flexible working arrangements. This is more likely to be offered in women‑dominated industries (77%) than in men-dominated industries (62%) or gender‑balanced industries (62%).
A risk of part-time work and job sharing is ‘job creep’, where an employee finds themselves trying to do a full-time job within reduced hours. To ensure that job sharing and part-time roles are successful, managers should engage in job redesign to ensure the needs of the business are met without over-stretching employees.
When done correctly, part-time work and job sharing can be both an attraction and retention tool. Employers should consider setting targets for part-time managers to get the ball rolling; this will ensure that part-time work is being role-modelled and normalised.
Role-model flexible working for both women and men
At every age, men are more likely to work full-time. But they may not always want to. WGEA and BCEC’s Gender Equity Insights 2024 report found both women and men wanted greater access to part-time work.
At a management level, a lack of role-modelling of part-time work may be perpetuating the belief that management or senior roles are not compatible with part-time hours. When they become parents, men face challenges with expectations to be always available and always full-time during these critical years. These ‘greedy jobs’ don’t allow men time for unpaid work in the home, to connect with family or to undertake fulfilling hobbies.
This also reinforces a gendered distribution of paid and unpaid work, driving the gender pay gap and gender inequality for women and men more broadly.
Address assumptions in pay negotiations
Employers are more likely to determine the pay for manager roles through private negotiation. Gender stereotypes and assumptions may be playing a role in the manager gender pay gap. There is clear evidence to suggest that women experience bias during the pay negotiation process. Research suggests that even when women do ask for more money (and the notion that they aren’t asking has been debunked), they are less likely than men to receive it.
When negotiating pay, it is important to remember that if employers are asking prospective employees to disclose their previous salary, women are likely to be disadvantaged due to the gender pay gap.
Pricing the role against the market value, instead of the employee’s salary history, is a way to make sure women are not disadvantaged.
Review discretionary payments and overtime strategies to identify and remove bias
How employers judge performance also plays a role in perpetuating gender pay gaps. There are studies that suggest that work performance is judged differently for women and men and that this may be disadvantaging women.
Employers can and should undertake a gender impact assessment of their performance evaluation processes to identify potential sources of bias and disadvantage so that they can be fixed.
The higher representation of women in part-time work, and unequal promotion practices may all contribute to the ‘discretionary gender pay gap’. However, it also reflects the amount of overtime payments made to men who are more likely to be in ‘greedy jobs’ that reward long hours.
This pattern of men receiving a higher proportion of their salary in discretionary pay may be disincentivising them from taking actions that could affect their bonuses, such as reducing their work hours to invest more time in caring for children.
Employers can assess whether they have a discretionary pay gap by doing a comprehensive gender pay gap analysis and paying special attention to total remuneration compared to base salary. Removing superannuation from the analysis can expose the degree to which bonuses and similar discretionary payments are contributing to the gender pay gap. When an analysis flags a discretionary pay gap, employers should undertake a gender impact assessment of their remuneration policy or framework. This should include asking if any gender is being disadvantaged by the bonus structure and if so, what can be done to address it.
The discretionary gender pay gap may also occur because men are investing longer hours into their work. If this is the case, implementing flexibility measures may help to level the playing field. It can also ensure that men can choose to take time to connect with their families, and to improve their wellbeing.
Offer parental leave equally to women and men
Research shows men who take extended parental leave are more likely to be involved in childcare as the child grows up. Changing social expectations around who engages in caring is an important step towards reducing the financial disadvantage women experience by undertaking most of the unpaid caring work. Another action to encourage more equitable sharing of unpaid care work is making universal parental leave available to all new parents and encouraging men to take time away from work to engage in caring.
Set targets for gender balance
An effective way to address the gender composition imbalance in manager roles is to make it a focus of employer action planning and then set targets to measure progress.
Employers who identify women’s underrepresentation in manager roles in their data can set a numeric target to increase the number of women in manager roles and look at their recruitment and promotion practices to make sure they are not disadvantaging any gender. For example, is presenteeism rather than output being rewarded in performance appraisals?
To support this, employers might also select targets for the number of manager roles that are done part-time (by women and men). Employers can also select targets around gendered access to flexible working arrangements and parental leave. When balancing work and care is normalised in an organisation, there is a much greater chance of creating an environment where women and men have equal access to career progression.
Download the full report
Download the full WGEA Ages and Wages Report to understand the actions employers can take to help make workplaces fairer for everyone.