Australians will finally see how men and women are paid in the workplace

Federal laws passed in March require the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to release data for private businesses with more than 100 employees – which covers about 5 million workers – from February 27 and for Commonwealth public sector employees next year.

While the agency has been collecting this data for almost a decade, until now it has published only anonymised information about industry sectors. In the first release, the agency will publish employer gender pay gaps by median as well as the gender composition and average remuneration per pay quartile of every large company.

Australians will finally be able to see how men and women are paid in the workplace.

Wooldridge, chief executive at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, hopes holding businesses to account will spur them to meaningfully address the gender pay gap, which has fallen to 13 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.