The survey, run by the Australian National University’s Social Research Centre, looks at the job outcomes and starting salaries of fresh graduates four to six months after finishing their studies.
Results showed newly minted female undergraduates are starting their professional careers on a median full-time annual salary of $75,300, compared with their male colleagues on $79,000.
That’s a 4.7% gap, even before the impacts of family formation and caregiving have kicked in.
On top of this, women even start on lower salaries than their male counterparts in some female-concentrated industries such as nursing and teaching.
The gender pay gap among new university graduates is narrower than Australia’s workforce-wide gender pay gap of 11.5%. However, the workforce-wide gap has generally been shrinking over the past ten years. In contrast, the gender gap in graduates’ starting salaries shows no overall improvement, averaging 3.9% over the past decade.
This disparity can’t be blamed on women working part-time, as these comparisons are based on full-time salaries.
So can it be explained by gender differences in subject choices, with women choosing fields of study that lead to lower-paying professions?
It’s a fair question, given 2021 research shows hourly wage rates in female-concentrated occupations are 9.9% lower than in male-concentrated ones.
But the data suggest that, no, subject choice can’t completely explain the gap either.
Some within-field gaps reach as high as 8.6%, such as architecture and built environment. Law and paralegal studies recorded a gap of 7.2%, followed by science and mathematics with 6.8%.
The fields where women start on a higher financial footing than their male peers are generally lower-paid to begin with, such as communications and creative arts.
Psychology is the exception where women begin their careers on a median salary that exceeds men’s and is not among the lowest-paid.
All employers in Australia with 100 or more staff are legally required to report their gender pay gaps to WGEA. The agency encourages organisations to conduct a like-for-like analysis to look for differentials between staff at comparative levels.
This can include a comparison of the pay and project opportunities of men and women starting out at graduate level. This would help ensure newly graduated women step into the workforce on an equal footing to their male peers.
Source: Female graduates are earning less than their male peers. What might be causing the gap?