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New laws requiring big businesses to publish their gender pay gaps are not fixing the broader issues, according to a new report.
Editor’s note: This story first appeared on Lawyers Weekly’s sister brand, HR Leader.
Yesterday (Tuesday, 4 March), the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published its second annual report about the existing gender pay gap in large Australian businesses. It showed – among other things – that even though one in two (56 per cent) employers improved their gender pay gaps from last year, four in five (79 per cent) of businesses nationwide still have a gender pay gap outside of the 5 per cent plus/minus range.
The annual reporting has come about because of the Federal Parliament’s passage of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023.
However – according to the fourth annual Women in the Workplace report from global tech provider HiBob, based on a survey of 2,000 men and a thousand women working in Australian workplaces, conducted in January 2025 and by global research outlet Pollfish – there are deep frustrations about the lingering pay gap between men and women.
Women working in Australian workplaces don’t believe, HiBob noted in a statement, that the government’s gender pay gap law has had enough of an effect on fixing the issue.
Only half (51 per cent) of the women surveyed said their employers are actively working to address the gender pay gap, with 37 per cent saying their employer will never prioritise closing the gap – up from 31 per cent last year.
However, green shoots emerged from the report. Ffity-three per cent of women said they are now more confident discussing a company’s gender pay gap during a job interview (up from 40 per cent last year), and seven in 10 (69 per cent) would decline a job offer if the company had a significant gender pay gap (up from 60 per cent last year).
The findings follow Lawyers Weekly's own Legal Firm of Choice 2023-24 results, which found that an overwhelmingly greater number of female practitioners believe a gender pay gap exists in the profession compared to their male counterparts.
Speaking about the findings, HiBob customer advocacy manager Sabrina Scherm (pictured) said the gender pay gap is a “deep-rooted” issue that will take years to fix.
“Part of the problem is that many organisations – especially those that run payroll and remuneration reviews in spreadsheets – aren’t keeping their finger on the pulse regularly enough on what their gender pay gap is and how it changes over time,” she said.
“It’s therefore not something that’s front of mind for big businesses until they have to report their data to the WGEA, and arguably not front of mind for small businesses at all.”
The federal government could, Scherm suggested, narrow the gender pay gap to mandate more regular updates and extend the existing law to Australia’s small businesses, which make up 97 per cent of the nation’s entities. Moreover, two in five (42 per cent) workers are in organisations of 19 or fewer employees.
“At the moment, only organisations of more than 100 people have to report their gender pay gap data publicly,” she said.
“Extending the law to include small businesses and making the gender pay gap both a nationwide and business-wide issue has the potential to make a big difference.”
Jerome Doraisamy is the managing editor of Lawyers Weekly and HR Leader. He is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in New South Wales, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
You can email Jerome at:
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Jerome Doraisamy
