A new report has revealed women in the federal public sector are paid around $19,000 less on average than men. It is the first time the sector has had to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, but an agency breakdown will not be published until next year.
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00:00Jacob Michelson's approach to gender equality in the workplace is simple.
00:07As long as you can do the job, if somebody's taken 10 years off to have a child, it doesn't
00:10make any difference to their ability to perform the role.
00:13Dr Michelson believes that, plus corporate policies and flexible work arrangements, have
00:18helped the business narrow its gender pay gap to less than 1%.
00:22We have lots of mothers who work here who have to be gone by 3 or 4pm for the kids,
00:27so we'll try and accommodate shifts to make it work for them.
00:29We've got a lot of people who work out of hours, so weekends and Sundays and things,
00:32and again we'll try and work around their kids' sport or whatever else.
00:36A new report reveals leadership on flexible work is more likely in Australia's public
00:40sector than private.
00:42And the former has a narrower gender pay gap, 13.5% compared to 21.7%.
00:50We see that they've worked really hard, flexible work, they've really worked hard at getting
00:54more women into leadership roles.
00:56One of the things that the report acknowledges is that there's still role segregation between
01:02men and women.
01:03It's the first time the whole federal public sector has reported to the government's workplace
01:07gender equality agency, including entities like the CSIRO, NBN and Australia Post.
01:14The report shows women working in the federal public sector in 2022 were taking home annual
01:19pay packets $19,000 lighter, on average, than men.
01:25In the private sector, they were $26,000 short.
01:28With transparency comes accountability and comes a focus and momentum to keep working
01:34on gender equality and make sure we are creating and delivering gender equal workplaces.
01:39And what's really important for an organisation to do is dig deeper into its own data to look
01:45at where the gender pay gaps are.
01:48Professor Kulik's advice to employers, flexibility does lead to better retention of women and
01:53maintains their salary progression, but it's no quick fix.
01:58Organisations that offer flexibility are able to get more women into leadership roles, but
02:04it takes 8 to 12 years for that to happen.
02:08And to employees, knowledge is power.
02:10Explicitly ask organisations, what is your gender pay gap and what are you doing to change
02:17it?
02:18Small talk for big outcomes.