The Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA) ‘Employer gender pay gaps’ report for the 2023–24 financial year (FY24) has shown that the Australian mining industry has made progress in decreasing pay disparity.
The WGEA’s definition of ‘gender pay gap’ refers to the difference between the average and median remuneration of men and women, expressed as a percentage of men’s pay. It is not the same as comparing the remuneration of men and women performing the same job.
The report covers the gender pay gaps for FY24 from 7800 private sector employers and 1700 corporate groups.
The data found that the average employer gender pay gap mid-point for the mining sector was 19.8 per cent, above the national average employer gender pay gap mid-point of 12.1 per cent.
The mining sector’s average salary was $195,141, making it the highest paid industry assessed under the WGEA’s report.
A total of 57 per cent of the mining companies assessed by the WGEA have improved their average gender pay gap over the past year, a one per cent increase on the overall national improvement of 56 per cent.
The mining industry’s mid-point of median gender pay gap decreased by 1.6 percentage points from FY23, well above the national 0.2 percentage point decrease.
While improvements have been made in improving the mining industry’s gender pay gap over the 2023–24 period, Chamber of Minerals and Energy Western Australia (CMEWA) chief executive officer Rebecca Tomkinson said men still outnumber women in the sector.
“Closing the pay gap in a traditionally male-dominated industry like mining will not be achieved overnight but women are increasingly voting with their feet to join a sector that has demonstrated its commitment to boosting female participation,” she said.
Tomkinson cited increased flexibility in fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) rosters and beneficial parental leave provisions as examples of this commitment.
“Women remain the predominate caregivers for their children and in many instances stop working for a period to raise young children,” Tomkinson said.
“This can contribute to the pay gap for women across all industries, but the resources sector has some of corporate Australia’s most accommodating policies and practices in place to encourage retention and to create a more family-friendly work structure.”
The WGEA’s ‘Employer gender pay gaps’ report for FY24 follows CMEWA releasing its ‘2024 Diversity and Inclusion in the Western Australian Resources Sector’ report last year.
CMEWA’s report found that the proportion of women in the mining and resources workforce has increased from 18.8 per cent to 24.8 per cent over the last decade.
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