Earlier this week, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) released its 2017-18 Gender Equality Scorecard.

This scorecard has a range of useful information about the status of the Gender Pay Gap in Australia.

In addition to the Gender Equality Scorecard, the WGEA also issues citations for the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality.  In 2018 WGEA issued 120 of these citations.

But when I look at who the WGEA issues these citations too, and the performance in the Gender Equality Scorecard, I get very confused about the message and overall value of the WGEA in solving gender pay issues.

Why am i confused?

You would expect that industries with high gender pay gap issues would have a low number of businesses with Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citations.   This is true for the construction industry, which in 2017-2018 had the second highest gender pay gap and had only one company with an Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation.

But does not hold true when I look at the Financial and Insurance Services Industry, which has the worst gender pay gap of any industry for the last 5 years.  27 companies in the Financial and Insurance Services Industry, managed to get an Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation!   And these are not small businesses, the big four banks, the largest employers in this industry have citations.

How can so many business in the Financial and Insurance Services Industry be Employer of Choice for Gender Equality, supposedly leaders in gender equality, when the gender pay gap has not dropped below 30 percent in the last 5 years?

In fact over 56 per cent of the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citations are issued to the five industries with the biggest gender pay gap!   So how are these businesses leaders in gender equality which is what the citation represents?

At the other end of the table, only 22 percent of the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citations are awarded to companies in the five industries with the lowest gender pay gap.

To me it’s a mismatch

To me, this mismatch of gender pay gap performance and Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citations is hindering the closing of the gender pay gap.  There are lots of businesses out there with the WGEA stamp of being leaders in gender equality with the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation, but the reality is totally different.

And this needs to change.

Employers should not be given the Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation just because they have a strategy.  They need to be actually delivering on that strategy and reducing the gender pay gap.

Any business whose gender pay gap is above the Australian average, currently 21.3 per cent should not be able to get an Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation.

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The Wealth Navigator

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