(Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley and UBS Group AG’s Australian operations are paying male staff over 40% more than women on average, according to company level data released by the Australian government for the first time on Tuesday.
Units of Barrenjoey Capital Partners Pty Ltd. and Bank of America Corp. also have median gender pay gaps of a similar magnitude, in a sign of how deeply compensation differentials are entrenched in the finance industry despite years of high-profile diversity initiatives intended to narrow the chasm.
Similar disclosure programs in other countries have also shown substantial gaps: in Japan for example, women working for top banks earn little more than half the amount of their male colleagues.
“Meaningful and sustainable change will take time,” Morgan Stanley Australia Chief Executive Officer Richard Wagner said in an emailed statement, adding that the company is committed to addressing the gender pay gap “through development, retention and promotion of more women into senior roles.”
UBS said its gender pay gap reflects a lower representation of women in senior roles, consistent with the rest of the industry. “We are confident that regardless of gender, employees are paid equally for the same or similar role, for work with equal value,” it said in a statement.
Barrenjoey and BofA’s Merrill Lynch Australia didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Overall, the median renumeration gap across the financial and insurance services sector — a calculation which includes pension payments and bonuses — was 26%, data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency shows. That was the second largest gap of all sectors analyzed, after construction.
The report is part of a new, annual release of pay differentials for all companies with 100 or more local employees. It compares median compensation rather than what men and women are paid for equivalent roles, meaning that companies with more men in higher-paying senior roles tend to have bigger gaps. The data excludes the compensation of CEOs and heads of business.
Other top shelf names with pay gaps above the sector average include Goldman Sachs Australia, Citigroup Australia, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac Banking Corp. While local stalwarts with better pay ratios than the rest of the industry include Australia & New Zealand Banking Group at 23% and Macquarie Group at 22%. National Australia Bank fared best out of the big Australian names with a median gap of 19% — in line with the overall national average across all industries.
“Transparency and accountability are critical for driving change,” said Finance Minister Katy Gallagher. “We are arming individuals and organizations with the evidence they need to take meaningful action to accelerate closing the gender pay gap in Australian workplaces.”
A full breakdown of all employer data is available on WGEA’s website.
“In finance we have this very male hierarchy,” said Carol Kulik, a professor at the University of South Australia who researches workplace diversity. “So a lot of times gender pay gaps, on the whole – not in like-for-like jobs – result from gender leadership gaps.”
Spokespeople for CBA and Westpac both said their gender pay gaps were influenced by the proportion of female employees in customer services and operational roles. CBA said such roles were “typically” lower paid and it’s working to increase the proportion of women in more senior and higher paying positions. Westpac said it had increased female leadership in the past year and was making progress in closing the pay gap.
NAB’s executive for people and culture, Sarah White said the bank had made “solid progress” to gender representation targets and pay equity in 2023 “but acknowledge there is more work to do.” ANZ Group’s executive for talent and culture Elisa Clements said its gender pay gap had improved by 5 percentage points in the last two years. “While we’re pleased with our progress, we know we have more to do to increase the representation of women in senior and higher-paying roles, which is the driver of our pay gap.”
Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Macquarie didn’t respond to a request for comment.
(Adds UBS statement in 5th paragraph and details on report methodology in 8th)
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Source: bnnbloomberg.ca
