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Female in-house lawyers earning less than men
New data from the Association of Corporate Counsel Australia shows a disparity in both baseline and median salaries between the sexes in the corporate counsel sphere.
Jerome Doraisamy
The ACC’s 2018 Global Compensation Survey, which received responses from over 5,000 corporate counsel worldwide, including over 400 in Australia, revealed that despite a mean salary for female in-house counsel of $141,000, men receive $169,000, marking a 16.5 per cent disparity.
While the gender pay gap is smaller in the Australian in-house sphere than the global trend, there remains a 22 per cent difference between the median salary for females ($210,000) and males ($270,000).
And when looking at additional compensation, median performance-based bonuses are $10,319 for women and $13,000 for men, “which means that male in-house lawyers entering the in-house field between 2017 and 2018 report 26 per cent more in bonus than their female colleagues report”.
There are stark differences in the gender pay gap worldwide. For example, the smallest pay gap was in the United States (85 percent) and the largest was in Latin America (38 percent). Australia lags behind Canada (81 percent) but is ahead of the broader Asia-Pacific region (77 percent). Bottom line — regardless of the extent, gender pay equality is a global issue.
ACC managing director and vice president Tanya Khan said, when it comes to addressing the gender pay gap in-house, access to key data is essential to make the right decisions, so that corporate counsel and their companies are aware of the pay disparities that exist and can work to close these gaps.
“This can be done through audits of pay inequity and review and development of effective remuneration policies and reporting at board level,” she said.
“Practices like employers basing a starting salary on someone’s previous earnings can perpetuate the pay gap and should be reviewed.”
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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