We’re proud of the progress we’re making in closing the gender pay gap, gender equity and promoting women in leadership.
At UniSuper, we believe that inclusion and diversity – diverse minds, beliefs and qualities – drives stronger performance and culture, and, in turn, better outcomes for our members. We’re not just ticking boxes. As Chief People Officer Julie Watkins outlines in our recently published Gender pay gap report:
As International Women’s Day 2025 comes and goes, it’s timely to check on our progress—but acknowledge there’s still work to do.
International Women’s Day
“I think, in part, that’s what International Women’s Day is for – it’s a moment to pause and reflect – to reflect on progress and achievement and what’s going well, to reflect on where there’s still real work to do, and then to think about some of the new and emerging issues, or things that might be different, since last year.”
That’s what IWD means to UniSuper Deputy Chair Nicole Gower, as spoken on the UniSuper International Women’s Day 2025 podcast.
This year, 38th Foreign Minister of Australia, the Hon. Julie Bishop, joined our annual International Women’s Day event for a special conversation with UniSuper Chief Marketing & Growth Officer, Dani Murrie. We also heard from UniSuper Private Client Adviser Kiran Bhullar who, like Ms Bishop, stressed the importance of education as a means of empowerment.
It’s important for us to as a fund to acknowledge International Women’s Day, and to celebrate great women and their diverse contributions—it’s more than just an event. Women make up just under half our total employee base, and 42.9% of women are in leadership roles at UniSuper as of January 2025. This exceeds our goal of 40% and is a 3.3% increase since last year. Women make up 55% of our board of directors and 44% of our executive leadership team.
Further, women make up approximately 60% of our membership. Our purpose is to help all our members achieve great retirement outcomes, and we know from industry insights that women typically retire with less than their male counterparts. FY 2021-22 Australian Taxation Office (ATO) data found the median super balance for women aged 60 to 64 was $158,806 versus $211,996 for males of the same age bracket—that’s a 25% difference.
International Women’s Day marks a significant opportunity to promote strategies women can adopt to ensure they’re not worse off at retirement, and to push for change at a policy level.
The gender pay gap and pay equity
We use two distinct metrics when we talk about gender and pay at UniSuper—the gender pay gap and pay equity. The two are sometimes used interchangeably but they have important differences.
“The gender pay gap is the financial manifestation of gender inequity,” Associate Professor in Leadership at the University of Queensland and Australian Gender Equity Council (AGEC) Managing Director, Dr Terry Fitzsimmons, explains.
“The gender pay gap can be measured at the national level through one percentage. That's the absolute difference between men and women across Australia who are working and their full-time remuneration pay gap.
“(Gender equity means) you're saying you want, where possible, for there to be an equality of not just access, but outcomes … it's got to be an equality of outcomes – not just access to resources – and equal opportunity. You want to see that manifest in outcomes.”
The gender pay gap is measured in two ways:
- average pay gap – the difference in average total earnings between men and women, regardless of role
- median pay gap – the middle point of the pay distribution.
This gap highlights historic gender inequality and its financial impact in the workforce.
“The biggest component’s actually the fact that we have a gender-segregated economy—we've got way more men in the really high paying industries like mining and construction, and way more women in the lower paid, like healthcare, childcare, etcetera,” Dr Fitzsimmons adds.
“The other part is that women face more barriers to progression—mainly because of the division of domestic labour. Women do about two thirds of the social and caring role, even if both partners are working full time. Of course, time's finite—you can't invent time, so you're giving up time on your career to work on these other things.”
So how are we tracking?
At UniSuper, the pay equity difference is slight (0.24%). We’re confident in our pay equity and have systems to maintain it. We regularly review pay across the fund and if unexplained gaps are found, we investigate and address the root causes. We report our position to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).
As of 31 March 2024, the median gender pay gap for total remuneration at UniSuper is 19.9%, a 1.8% decrease in the 12 months since we last reported. Around 30% of women are represented in the upper pay quartile at the fund, and just over 40% in the upper-middle quartile.
Modernisation of our parental leave policy has seen a 50% increase in men taking up paid benefits and flexible working, including paid parental leave for 20 weeks. This has been beneficial for all genders and we hope that both mothers and fathers with caring responsibilities continue to make use of it.
Last year we committed to delivering inclusive leadership training following a gender culture review, which we’ve now completed. We’re also proud to have formalised a mentoring program with Women in Super and continue as an active participant with the industry advocacy body.
As Dr Fitzsimmons notes, some professions continue to have a gender imbalance due to historical biases or tendencies. While progress has been made, we’re focused on promoting greater representation in these traditionally male-dominated areas, like Investments, Financial Advice and Technology. We want to build a sense of comfort for male employees to show allyship with gender equity initiatives. So, how might our men be able to do that in 2025?
“We need to realise you're not really giving anything up. Inclusion produces a bigger pie—there's more for everyone. Not ‘oh, if I give that to that person, then I'm missing out’. It just creates so much more opportunity for everybody, for everyone,” Dr Fitzsimmons encourages.
He views this allyship as especially important amid an uncertain global backdrop: “I think it’s critical, it’s the fight of our time. WGEA has a data set … we’ve been able to show causality, that a certain percentage of women on your ELT and your board produces a certain percentage of revenue and capital growth.”