Women’s Health in the South East (WHISE) marks Equal Pay Day 2026 by welcoming three major data releases — and pointing to the growing evidence that targeted action closes pay gaps.
“Ten years ago we argued about whether the gap was real,” WHISE Chief Executive Officer Kit McMahon said.
“Now we can see where it sits, who it falls hardest on, and, most importantly, what actually shifts it. That is an extraordinary public asset, and the ABS, WGEA and the Commission deserve real credit for building it.”
Today is Equal Pay Day, marking the 48 additional days Australian women needed to work to match what men earned in the previous financial year.
It arrives at the end of a remarkable fortnight for evidence. On 13 August the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported the national average gender pay gap at 11.3% — the lowest on record. Earlier this month the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector released its five-year report, the first longitudinal, sector-wide dataset on workplace gender equality in Australia, drawing on workplace gender audits from around 300 organisations across 2021, 2023 and 2025. In March, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published gender pay gaps for more than 10,500 employers covering nearly 5.9 million Australians.
Women’s Health in the South East (WHISE), the regional women’s health service for Victoria’s Southern Metropolitan Region, says the combined picture is the most useful it has ever been.
The data is complex. That is a feature, not a flaw.
The ABS publishes six gender pay gap measures and presents them as a range — from 9.1% to 26.1%. The widely reported 11.3% figure covers the average for full-time adult employees on ordinary time earnings. Measured across all employees, the gap is 26.1%: men averaging $1,871.30 a week against $1,372.20 for women, a difference of $25,953 a year.
The measures can also point in different directions. On the ABS measure, construction records one of the smallest average gender pay gaps in the country at 3.1%. On WGEA’s employer data, the typical construction employer has a gap of 23.8% — the highest of any industry — with women making up 21% of the workforce, 10% of the top pay quartile and 37% of the bottom.
Ms McMahon said the complexity of the evidence should be embraced rather than smoothed over.
“Both numbers are correct. They are answering different questions,” Ms McMahon said.
“One asks what full-time workers earn at base rates. The other asks what everybody actually takes home. In construction, the gap lives in exactly what the first measure leaves out — overtime, allowances, bonuses, superannuation, and the part-time, casual and subcontracted workers who never appear in the count.
“That divergence isn’t a reason to distrust the data. It’s the data telling us something specific: that gendered segregation shapes not only who does what work, but which parts of that work our instruments can see.”
Where effort was targeted, gaps closed
WHISE points to the Commission’s five-year findings as the clearest evidence yet that pay gaps respond to deliberate intervention.
The Victorian public sector’s overall mean pay gap has not narrowed since 2021, sitting at 15.7% — around $23,052 a year per woman. But within that flat figure, gaps closed sharply where organisations targeted structural drivers, including in areas long considered immovable. Police and emergency services fell from 18.1% to 12.0%. Labouring roles fell 9.4 percentage points. Public health care, the widest gap in the sector, fell five points from 34.0% to 29.0%. Local government is now the only industry inside the Commissioner’s target range, down from 5.7% to 2.4%.
Where no targeted strategies were implemented, gaps widened — including in community and personal service work, up 4.1 points to 24.1%, and clerical and administrative work, up 1.9 points.
The national picture shows movement too. WGEA reports that 54.8% of employers reduced their average gender pay gap year-on-year, with the national mid-point falling 0.9 percentage points to 11.2%.
“The lesson is consistent across every dataset released this month,” Ms McMahon said.
“General commitment produces general nothing. Targeted, structural, evidence-led effort produces measurable change — and it works fastest in the places people insist are hopeless.”
What organisations can do
WHISE has published two free resources to help employers act on their own data: A Guide to Evaluating the Gender Pay Gap, developed for defined entities under Victoria’s Gender Equality Act 2020, and the Placemat Ready Reckoner, a practical tool for assessing whether policies, programs and initiatives are gender-blind, gender-aware or genuinely gender-transformative.
The organisation also points to its own record in one of the most segregated parts of the labour market. Through Nice Work If You Can Get It, delivered with Chisholm Institute and the South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance and funded by the Victorian Government, WHISE applied Australia’s first Gender Impact Assessment to manufacturing and engineering training. Female student attrition at Chisholm fell from 60% in 2022 to 16% in 2024.
WHISE is now extending that approach with Swinburne TAFE and The Men’s Project at Jesuit Social Services, co-designing with trade teachers.
“We published that evaluation in full, including what didn’t work, because the sector needs honest evidence more than it needs success stories,” Ms McMahon said.
She added that the data’s limits matter as much as its findings. The Commission’s report notes that indicative pay gaps were widest between First Nations women and non-Indigenous men, at 24.8%, and that experiences of sexual harassment rose for non-binary and gender-diverse employees from 12.7% to 16.9%. Few organisations collect demographic data beyond gender and age.
“What the national number can’t yet capture is the experience of gender-diverse employees, of women facing compounding discrimination, and the weight of unpaid care and unpaid leave. Closing those data gaps is itself an act of equality,” Ms McMahon said.
“Equal Pay Day is often a day for sighing at slow progress. I’d rather mark it differently. We know more than we ever have, we know what works, and the organisations that act on that knowledge are already getting results. That is grounds for optimism — and optimism is a daily act of defiance.”
