While progress has been made in recent years to reduce the gender pay gap in Australia, it will still take more than a quarter of a century to close it.
Our new research with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency has found that while the gender pay gap in total remuneration fell from 24.7 per cent to 20.1 per cent in the last seven years, it is likely to take another 26 years for the full-time pay gap to close completely.
For executives, the gender pay gap could disappear within the next decade.
But the outlook is less positive for the predominately female-dominated community and personal service workforce.
If the current rate of change were to continue, the gender pay gap for full-time executives would be eliminated within 10 years, and for senior managers in less than 15 years.
For workers in non-management roles, it could take even longer and some occupations may see no change at all in their gender pay gap in the coming years.
But we do know that organisations that committed to a comprehensive suite of gender equality policies and practices, and did so consistently over time, achieved lower gender pay gaps.
They also appointed more women to senior leadership roles.
Those companies that implemented the most regular and comprehensive gender equality policies and actions saw gender pay gaps reduce by 4.4 percentage points for managers between 2015 and 2020, and by 2.3 percentage points for non-managers.
This compares to the least consistent organisations, where the gender pay gap for managers fell by only 1.4 percentage points over the same period, and the non-managerial pay gap remained unchanged.
We also now know that targets work.
Organisations that set consistent targets for appointing women on to boards are found to increase the share of female board members at twice the pace of those that set no targets.
This shows that when targets are in place they can be met, and reasonably quickly.
But targets needs to be more ambitious if we are to move the share of women on boards beyond 30 per cent - yet company targets are becoming less common.
So how do we move to a point where more organisations are prioritising gender equality, and doing so regularly, rather than something that is focused on every other year?
Leadership, ambition and embedded gender equality practices will play a significant role in creating and sustaining more equitable workplaces.
When leaders care about an issue, a process or an outcome, the rest of the organisation tends to care too.
Associate Professor Rebecca Cassells and Distinguished Professor Alan Duncan, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre.
