{"id":926017,"date":"2026-10-13T00:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T00:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/926017\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T00:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T00:32:14","slug":"more-part-time-bosses-and-co-ceos-could-keep-women-in-leadership-and-narrow-australias-pay-gap-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/926017\/","title":{"rendered":"More part-time bosses and co-CEOs could keep women in leadership and narrow Australia\u2019s pay gap | Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

More part-time bosses and \u201cco-CEOs\u201d could keep women in leadership and narrow Australia\u2019s gender pay gap, the federal government\u2019s Workplace Gender<\/a> Equality Agency says.<\/p>\n

WGEA warned resistance to gender equality was growing and urged employers to make management more flexible to reduce the gender pay gap, where women earn $0.79 for every $1 a man makes on average.<\/p>\n

WGEA and Curtin University research on Tuesday found women were reaching senior positions but were more likely to leave, widening the pay gap and contributing to under-representation in high-paying<\/a> and senior roles.<\/p>\n

Full-time women were promoted more often than men in 2024-25, according to the report\u2019s analysis of WGEA data covering 5.4 million employees.<\/p>\n

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But men were slightly more likely to be promoted to management positions and women who reached management positions were more likely to resign than their male counterparts, at 13.8% compared with 12%.<\/p>\n

WGEA\u2019s chief executive, Christine Castley, said uneven caring responsibilities combined with a lack of flexible work options had prevented women from staying in senior positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is very much an embedded idea that management roles can never be part-time, and probably what flows from that is most flexible arrangements don\u2019t apply to management roles,\u201d Castley said.<\/p>\n

Most women still either stop working or work part-time after having their first child, according to the report\u2019s analysis of Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) data.<\/p>\n

Leadership could be dominated by men even in industries where most workers were women, the report found.<\/p>\n

In the healthcare and social assistance sector, women made up three-quarters of the workforce but about half of CEO positions. Women accounted for just one in five board chairs or chief executives of Australian companies.<\/p>\n

Castley said employers could think creatively about reforms to keep women in senior roles, including allowing grandparents to access carer\u2019s leave or rostering to fit school drop-off and pickup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing increasingly the use of \u2013 even at the CEO level \u2013 co-CEOs, who are essentially job-sharing a role.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report found that just 13.2% of organisations designed management roles for part-time work but those that did saw significantly higher promotion rates for female part-time non-managers.<\/p>\n

Employers with flexible work strategies tended to employ more women at every level of senior management.<\/p>\n

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Dr Silvia Salazar, a report co-author, said parents sharing care responsibility would also play a role.<\/p>\n

Women accounted for 80% of people taking primary carer parental leave in 2024-25 and were more likely to quit their job while on parental leave than men.<\/p>\n

The report found 33% employers were not funding additional paid parental leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployers cannot determine how care is divided at home but they can help make sure that becoming a parent does not mean stepping off the path to career progression,\u201d Salazar said.<\/p>\n

Workplace equality metrics have improved in recent years but policies addressing gendered inequality have faced growing hostility, especially among Australian youth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, has said<\/a> the gender pay gap is due to women taking time off but employers should not have to pay for parental leave.<\/p>\n

Castley said the agency aimed to provide objective data in the face of growing scepticism over gender equity.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly many people who have worked in this space have a bit of a sense that the conversation\u2019s moved a few steps backwards from where it was,\u201d Castley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have made really good progress over the last 40 years or so in this context but now there is a narrative that seems to be pulling that progress backwards, at least in a narrative sense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More part-time bosses and \u201cco-CEOs\u201d could keep women in leadership and narrow Australia\u2019s gender pay gap, the federal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-926017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}