New data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency has for the first time revealed the gender pay gap of every private company in the country with more than 100 employees. While the national gap for average total remuneration sits at 21.7% according to the agency’s data, the numbers vary significantly more when looking at the Australian media sector.
Crikey looked at the numbers for major Australian media publications to see where each employer fell on gender equality in the workplace by a number of key measures (although the data provided by the WGEA is significantly more comprehensive and looks at whether employers had provisions and plans in place for gender equality, domestic violence responses, and maternity leave, among other factors).
The data, which is for the 2022/23 financial year, will be more comprehensive in 2023/24, with public companies included in the data. As such, Crikey’s analysis largely excludes the ABC and SBS, which publish their own, slightly less detailed gender equality statistics. The limited information included in the above graph comes from the broadcasters’ most recent diversity reports.
Sky News Australia is the only major Australian media company to have no negative gender pay gap, with women earning 1.1% more than men at Macquarie Park based on total remuneration.
Seven West Media had the biggest gender pay disparity at 13.8%, but Guardian Australia had the worst representation for women in the lowest pay quartile at 72%.
While not a single major media company had an equal share of women in their top pay quartile, Sky News Australia joins News Corp as the only companies with at least 50% in the second-highest quartile.
Despite its pay statistics, Sky News Australia had by some margin the lowest percentage of women in management positions at 24%.
Guardian Australia had the most women represented as a share of total employees at 58%, while newswire service Australian Associated Press (AAP) had the lowest share at 40%.
While Private Media, publisher of Crikey, was not captured by the WGEA as the company has fewer than 100 employees, the company said it has an 11.8% pay gap, with that shifting significantly for this masthead. At Crikey, women are paid 25.6% more than men and comprise 66% of management positions.
Last week, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the gender pay gap was at a record low 15%, with an analysis that also accounted for the public sector.
Clarification: An earlier version of this article did not include Guardian Australia, which was also represented in the recently released WGEA figures. It has been updated to include Guardian Australia’s, as well as Private Media’s, pay quartile figures.
“At Crikey, women are paid 25.6% more than men and comprise 66% of management positions.”
These days Crikey has only one female reporter and two (arguably) overpaid female editors of questionable ability (recall the Guy Rundle Brittany Higgins disaster and the false story on the Chinese government persecuting gay people – both of which were ultimately unpublished). As Saeed seems to imply, the skewed effect this creates is the only reason the data forecast a gender pap gap at Crikey (25.6%) in favour of women for 23/24. Find the average pay for women, who number very few at Crikey but nonetheless occupy positions that attract ridiculously high salaries, and compare it to the rest. I’d be more interested in what the female reporter is being paid compared with the other male reporters. So yeah. Nice one, Crikey. Fooling no-one.
How does the report define a pay gap? Do they mean hourly rate paid for the same job or hours worked * hourly rate. If the hourly rate is the same regardless of gender, presumably this is equality of opportunity and suggests no gap. If hours worked differs between genders then it would be helpful to know if this was s result of company policy or individual choice. Historically, women have worked fewer hours for employers because continuation of the human race nudges society in that direction.
Looking at it from an employer’s perspective, if a task requires 4 person years of effort and there’s a choice between hiring 4 people full time or 8 people half time, the former option will be administratively and financially preferable- half the paperwork. Until both parents are required to take equal amounts of parental leave, the system will tend towards a gender bias in earnings, wouldn’t it, because it costs more to the company to carry more employees on the payroll and the purpose of the typical business is to make a profit.
Transparency at its best. Crikey pipped by Stokes. Priceless irony.
Love it!
So maybe that attitude of just getting on with it rather than talking about it might be better….
That is the classic/admirable side of traditional conservatism.
The sort that attracts people from working class backgrounds, front line public sector workers, minorities and women.
They don’t want to play the victim.
It was what was so on the nose about Jacinta Price’s stance on the Voice.
It makes people on the modern left uncomfortable because they love a victim who they can look down upon with middle class compassion/patronisation.
The line between the two is always tricky.
“People on the modern left”? You mean people who are young and on the left? Or People who are on the left since, say, modern times?
Do you remember Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark back in 2016, which served to weaponise an entire victim demographic and shovel Trump into the Whitehouse?
Who knew then that the fossil fuel shills, radical evangelicals and pillow magnates were all young modern lefties?