Financial and insurance services is “making strong progress” in reducing its pay gap, with the gap falling to 29.5%.
According to the latest figures from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) scorecard, the gender pay gap was highest in the construction sector at 30.6% while financial and insurance services was second at 29.5%.
However, the report noted financial services had made strong progress since 2013, reducing its gap by more than one percentage point each year. This was the second-largest reduction out of the 19 industries surveyed.
Some 76% of companies in the industry said they had investigated their gender pay gap and 66% had taken action since then, the highest of all industries.
The most-common actions taken after an audit were identifying causes of the gaps, correcting instances of unequal pay and reporting pay equity metrics to the board.
Overall, women made up 50% of the workforce but less than 20% of chief executive roles and the average gender gap was 22.8%.
Men were twice as likely to be earning more than $120,000 while women were 50% more likely than men to be in the bottom quartile, those earning $60,000 or less.
