Three Years On: What Impact Has Gender Pay Gap Publication Really Had?

This year marked the third cycle of public gender pay gap reporting in Australia.

When the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) introduced employer pay gap publication, it was one of the most significant shifts in workplace gender equality policy we’ve seen in decades.

The intention was clear: make pay gaps visible, create transparency, encourage action and ultimately accelerate progress towards workplace gender equality.

Three years on, it’s worth asking a simple question:

What impact has it actually had?

The answer, in my view, is that the verdict is largely positive. Transparency has worked. Awareness has increased. Boards and CEOs are - in most cases - paying attention, and we’ve so far reduced the national (total remuneration) pay gap by a modest .1%.

While we’ve become much better at identifying pay gaps, we’re still struggling to understand their causes and therefore how to address them.

What WGEA Got Right

Before mandatory reporting, many organisations simply didn’t know the size of their gender pay gap. Others knew, but there was little pressure to act.

WGEA's publication of pay gaps changed that.

Today, most large organisations can tell you their headline gender pay gap. Boards are asking more questions. CEOs are expected to understand the issue. Gender pay equity has moved from an HR discussion to one rightly held around the boardroom table

That’s real progress. In that sense, WGEA achieved exactly what it set out to do. It created awareness. It created transparency. And it made the gender pay gap topic a national one that was impossible to ignore.

But Has It Created Accountability?

Three reporting cycles in, a predictable pattern has emerged.

• WGEA publishes employer gender pay gaps.

• Media outlets highlight organisations and industries with the smallest or largest gaps.

• Companies (sometimes) issue statements explaining their results and why they are different to everyone else.

• LinkedIn fills with commentary.

…then the conversation largely disappears until the following year.

Whilst publication creates attention, it doesn’t necessarily create accountability - and it's accountability that really drives action.

In the Australian context, there is no requirement to demonstrate year-on-year improvement. There are no direct financial penalties for organisations with large pay gaps - and limited non-financial penalties. There is little distinction between organisations making meaningful progress and those simply meeting compliance requirements.

To be fair, WGEA has recognised this challenge through the introduction of Gender Equality Indicator (GEI) Targets this year - and that’s a positive step. However, the accountability cycle remains long. Organisations can set ambitious targets today and will not be publicly measured against them until 2029. And many of those targets don’t go to the heart of the underlying causes of the gender pay gap.

We’ve become very good at measuring compliance. We’re still not very good at measuring action & progress.

The Unintended Consequence

There is another emerging challenge that isn’t often discussed. Organisations are increasingly becoming frustrated with the gender pay gap conversation.

In most cases, not because they don’t care about gender equality. And not because they disagree with transparency - but because they increasingly feel they are being judged on only half the story.

Australia’s public reporting framework focuses almost entirely on the unadjusted gender pay gap. The unadjusted gap is important. It tells us whether women and men are equally represented across different levels of an organisation and whether women are reaching the highest-paid roles.

But it doesn’t explain why the gap exists - and it doesn’t tell us whether women and men performing comparable work are being paid fairly, or what pay factors are contributing to the gap - like an adjusted pay gap analysis would.

As a result, organisations can spend years investing in gender equality initiatives, remuneration reviews and governance improvements, yet see little movement in their headline number because structural challenges often take much longer to change.

The unintended consequence is that some organisations are becoming disengaged from the conversation altogether - and not because they don’t believe in the objective. But because they feel the measurement framework doesn’t fully reflect the complexity of the issue for their organisation or industry.

The Missing Half Of The Story

This raises a bigger question. Are we measuring enough?

Globally, many jurisdictions and organisations consider both the unadjusted and adjusted gender pay gaps because they answer two very different questions.

The unadjusted gap tells us where women and men sit within an organisation.

The adjusted gap helps us understand whether women and men are being paid differently after accounting for factors such as role level, tenure, location, performance and other legitimate drivers of pay.

Both measures matter. One tells us more about representation & structural dynamics. The other tells us about pay equity. Together, they provide a far more complete picture. Yet Australia’s public conversation remains overwhelmingly focused on just one side of the equation.

The result is that organisations often know what their gap is, but not necessarily what is driving it. And if we don’t understand the drivers, it’s difficult to know where to focus our efforts.

For some organisations, the biggest driver may be leadership representation. For others, it may be hiring practices, promotion rates, retention of women at key career stages or remuneration practices. Without understanding the underlying drivers, organisations risk investing significant time and resources in initiatives that fail to address the root cause.

The Next Chapter

The next phase of the conversation shouldn’t be about whether transparency works. It does, transparency has been a success.

The real question now is whether the measures we are using today are enough to drive the outcomes we want tomorrow.

Publishing an unadjusted gender pay gap tells us that a gap exists. It doesn’t tell us why.

That’s where the national conversation needs to evolve. Not away from unadjusted pay gaps - but beyond them. The next chapter is understanding why it exists.  It’s about helping organisations understand the drivers behind the outcomes they report.

While transparency has successfully shown us where gaps exist, progress will depend on leaders having the insight and confidence to take accountability and drive the right changes through real action.