What is the Gender Pay Gap?

The Gender Pay Gap is the difference in average earnings between women¹Acknowledging women and those who identify as women, regardless of gender assigned at birth. Note that WGEA has not included non-binary data in its assessment as the agency is the process of establishing a baseline level for this information. and men. Calculating the gender pay gap can be a useful approach to measure and track gender equality across an organisation. It is not to be confused with equal pay where men and women are paid equally for the same role.

How is the Gender Pay Gap Calculated?

The gender pay gap is calculated²The Gender Pay Gap is calculated using both Base Salary and Total Remuneration. Base Salary is an employee’s standard rate of pay. Total Remuneration is the total sum of an employee’s package including superannuation, bonus etc. using two methods:

• Average Pay Gap – averaging all female and male salaries, the difference is expressed as a percentage (if in favour of women the percentage will be negative).
• Median Pay Gap – using the midpoint salary for females and males, the difference is expressed as a percentage (if in favour of women the percentage will be negative).

What were the outcomes of 2023/24 WGEA Report for Woods Bagot?

For 2023-2024 our gender pay gap across our Australian based workforce is as follows:

• Average Total Remuneration Gender Pay Gap – 14.3%
This shift represents a 3% increase, from 2022/23, in favour of males

• Median Total Remuneration Gender Pay Gap – 11.3% (+ 1.9% from 2022/23)
This shift represents a 1.9% increase, from 2022/23, in favour of males

• Average Base Salary Gender Pay Gap – 12.1%
This shift represents a 2.3% increase, from 2022/23 in favour of males

• Median Base Salary Gender Pay Gap – 9.5%
This shift represents a 0.9% decrease, from 2022/23, in favour of females, however still leaves a 9.5% median base salary gender pay gap in favour of males

Why do we have a Gender Pay Gap?

Woods Bagot has 50/50 gender representation across the Australian business, with 42% of Senior Leadership roles being held by women. Senior female representation throughout our leadership roles in the business continue to be an area of focus where Woods Bagot actively advocates, monitors, invests in and develops.

Woods Bagot continues to build its pipeline of future leaders, through a yearly graduate program intake. Across our five Australian studios, we employ graduates of both Architecture and Interior Design, where we aim to achieve 50/50 gender representation. During the last intake, 68% of the graduates were female. Our continued focus is to support women at the coal face of their career with growth opportunities throughout the business.

Woods Bagot acknowledges that females tend to dominate administrative and support roles. Females predominating within these career channels and streams statistically do not hold leadership roles. When more females are in lower paid positions, it does contribute to the Gender Pay Gap, which is why our graduate intake program is integral in building our pipeline of future female leaders and does impact these results.

What actions are we taking to address the Gender Pay Gap?

We continue to monitor the pay gap by regularly reviewing our internal salaries and gender composition to improve equity across the organisation and against external salary benchmarking. Our internal processes include reviewing our new hires and skill sets required, performance evaluations and internal promotions with a lens on gender parity.

Woods Bagot examines the Gender Pay Gap in the global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Plan FY25 – FY29, where intersectional diversity aspects (including gender, ethnicity and disability) are addressed with achievable targets business-wide over a 4 year period. Our global target is to achieve a +/- 2% gender pay gap by FY29 globally by undertaking a studio-by-studio analysis to understand data and other factors.