Australia’s largest and most diverse peak body for retail, the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) has welcomed the continuing decline in the gender pay gap announced by the Workforce Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) but highlighted the need to continue to build on improvements.
ARA Paul Zahra said, “It is good to see the national industry average total remuneration gap has reduced by 1.1pp to 21.7%, and that the Retail sector has stayed steady at 13.7%, although we are of course aiming for a further drop in this area.
“In Retail, women are thriving in Management and Heads of Business roles however we are lagging in achieving real growth in women CEO’s and only just staying steady in Board representation.
Presenting at the Women in Leadership Summit today, Mr Zahra said “With only 13.9% of women CEO’s in retail businesses this simply isn’t good enough. Solving gender diversity in all businesses and workplaces builds a vital foundation for diversity, equality and inclusion that you can then expend and refine to include everybody.
“Women are fundamental to the success of our industry as women contribute around 75% of discretionary spending and make up 56.4% of the retail workforce. As Australia’s largest private employer, the retail industry has such an important role to play in bringing about genuine societal change”.
“As we enter the powerful world of Artificial Intelligence driven recruitment, it’s critical that privacy and ethics are strongly built into these new systems. We must use these new technology tools for good and rather than repeating recruitment biases we instead embed opportunities into these platforms to improve equality,” he said.
At the WGEA launch of the scorecard the ARA was keen to explore what kind of systemic failures continue to contribute to the imbalance of women in leadership and Boards.
It was identified that this happens in different ways for different employers, which is why the WGEA states is important for all employers to undertake a gender pay gap analysis. The WGEA outlined that some industries are predominantly male, and there is a need to address stereotypes in these industries. For others it could be issues relating to recruitment, retention or promotion levels, or with women needing to work flexibly. At the moment there is only 7% of managers that are part-time employees, and 80% of these are women.
“Gender equality is a key focus for the ARA and we are working with our members to reduce the gap in pay and representation in senior leadership and governance roles”, said Paul Zahra.
Following consultation with our members, the ARA is currently producing hands-on tools to help retailers define, develop and analyse areas they need to work on in their own businesses. While we can’t make the changes within the businesses ourselves, we want to ensure our sector is educated and equipped to deliver growth by the 2024/25 report.
Key statistics identified in the new WGEA Data Explorer:
- National Median total remuneration gender pay gap 19% – Retail 7.1%
- Nationally women on Boards 18.8% – Retail 19.6%.
- National Paid Parental Leave 21.3% – Retail 9.2%
- National appointments of women 52% – Retail 56%
- National women CEO’s 22% – Retail 13.9%
- National women employees 51.2% – Retail is 56.4%
- National Heads of business 30.2% – Retail 41.6%
- National women Managers 42% – Retail 49.1%
- Retail Sector is on equal par with national results for policies and training on sex-based harassment and discrimination grievance process.
The ARA has been actively engaging its members through an Annual Gender Equality Symposium and has developed a Position Statement on Gender Equality outlining the steps needed to address imbalances between men and women, including the gender pay gap.
