Female CEO under-remuneration drags down gender pay gap

Yasmine Raso

Senior Journalist, Financial Newswire

4 March 2026

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA’s) much-awaited data release has confirmed that while progress has been made on the number of employers bringing their overall remuneration gender pay gap under the average 11.2 per cent, there is still more to be done for women in C-suite roles or belonging to the upper pay quartile who remain disadvantaged.

This was all but confirmed in a statement made by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which had its 2024-25 average total remuneration gender pay gap come in at 5.6 per cent as determined by the WGEA; however, when the WGEA “classification” of CEO remuneration was excluded from the authority’s total average, it actually decreased even further to 4.8 per cent and marked a 0.5 percentage point in year-on-year improvement.

With WGEA’s inclusion of CEO remuneration for the first time in its 2024 data taken into account, APRA’s overall total remuneration gender pay gap actually saw a 0.3 percentage point increase from the previous year.

While the finance and insurance services industry as a whole was determined by the WGEA to be “gender balanced” with 53 per cent of its total workforce comprised of women, only 37 per cent of the industry’s upper pay quartile was made up of women compared to 66 per cent of its lower pay quartile.

At a national level, men were 1.8 times more likely to be mployed in the higher-earning quartile and women were 1.4 times more likely to be employed in the lower-earning quartile.

“The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) is committed to strengthening gender representation and promoting a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace, where all employees feel safe, respected and supported to develop their careers. Transparency in gender pay data is an important part of this effort,” the watchdog said in a statement.

“APRA acknowledges that further progress is required to achieve gender pay equity. Internal analysis indicates a 0.6 percentage point increase in the nonmanagerial gender pay gap, driven primarily by workforce composition. Within this cohort, women remain underrepresented in technical, leadership and specialist roles, which typically attract higher market remuneration and have influenced the overall outcome.”

According to the WGEA, the ongoing gender discrepancy among the pay quartiles has been identified as a key source fuelling the gender pay gap, particularly if “an employer concentrates one gender in the highest earning quartiles and the other gender in the lowest earning quartiles”. The national average total remuneration in the male-dominated highest-earning quartile is 3.7 times higher than that seen in the women-dominated lowest-pay quartile.

APRA also noted three initiatives it had put into practice to “advance gender equality and address structural drivers of the gender pay gap”, including:

• Striving to achieve gender diversity of 40% women, 40% men and 20% flexible across the overall workforce, as well as within managerial and nonmanagerial cohorts.
• Embedding gender balance in recruitment practices, including across applicant pools and interview panels.
• Encouraging the uptake of gender neutral paid parental leave to support shared caregiving, alongside flexible working arrangements accessible to all employees.