1. Pay gaps & equal remuneration – 2025 WGEA data

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency Data Explorer publicly benchmarks companies employing over 100 people against six Gender Equality Indicators. The headline data is the gender pay gap; this is complimented by an enormous wealth of information about workforce composition, policy, consultation and action.

We have collated the information on architecture and landscape practices and organisations. This offers great insight into 29 organisations employing 5,745 people.

The data provides a shock to stimulate action, while the questions asked by WGEA help light the way forward, showing the array of policies and programs possible.

The chart above captures the median and average pay gap data for architecture and landscape architecture practices and organisations. The WGEA goal for employers is to maintain an average total remuneration and median total remuneration gender pay gap within the target range of -5% to +5%.

WGEA explains that, if a company’s average gap is higher than the median gap, a disproportionate number of men in high-income roles is having a greater impact on the gender pay gap. If the average gap is lower than the median, a disproportionate number of women in lower-paying roles has the greater impact.

We STRONGLY recommend that all practices measure their pay gaps, not just those that are obliged to do so. (It would be EXCELLENT if all also publicly reported.) The WGEA website provides details and resources to support any organisation to undertake these calculations, including a Gender Pay Gap Analysis Guide and a guide to Pay Equity for Small Business.

Read on for detailed information (click on the links in the yellow box to navigate).

Background

On 4 March 2025, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published the average and median gender pay gap data for Australian businesses that employ over 100 people. This is the second year that the data includes pay gaps – a strategic move to force a conversation about the pay gap and accelerate change. For the first time the 2025 data includes average pay gaps (in addition to the median gaps published in 2024), total average remuneration and average remuneration by pay quartiles. It also include a great deal of additional information about policy inclusions and processes.

The Gender Equality Indicators are as follows:

GEI 1 – gender composition of the workforce
GEI 2 – gender composition of governing bodies of relevant employers
GEI 3 – equal remuneration between women and men
GEI 4 – availability and utility of employment terms, conditions and practices relating to flexible working arrangements for employees and to working arrangements supporting employees with family or caring responsibilities
GEI 5 – consultation with employees on issues concerning gender equality in the workplace
GEI 6 – sexual harassment, harassment on the ground of sex or discrimination

The reporting includes 28 architecture and landscape architecture practices and the Australian Institute of Architects. The dataset reveals a great deal about what the largest architecture and landscape architecture practices are – and are not – doing in relation to gender equity. It captures the factors that accumulate and intersect to create the conditions in which pay gaps shrink or expand.

Employer statements

Employers have the opportunity to submit Employer Statements as part of their submission to WGEA. This is an opportunity to provide context to the data. Only eight practices provided statements. These can be found via the links below.

Considerations

Like any data set, the information available through the WGEA Data Explorer comes with caveats and complications. Keep the following in mind when examining the data.

Partnership payments Pay gaps and average remuneration figures DO NOT include partnership payments not associated with employment contracts. WGEA explains:

“In a partnership organisation the employer gender pay gap:

includes the remuneration for all employees and includes salaried partners (i.e. partners with an employment contract)
excludes a partner’s earnings associated with the partnership.

WGEA is only authorised to collect remuneration data on employees. A partnership organisation is a structure made up of 2 or more people who distribute income or losses between themselves. Under this arrangement, partners are not considered employees for the purposes of reporting to WGEA.

Employers without partners can not be fairly compared to partnerships in their industry because in partnerships a proportion of their top earners are not included in their gender pay gap calculation.

Employers can provide information about the influence of partnership earnings on their gender pay gap in their Employer Statement. Recommendation 7.3b of the WGE Act Review proposed reporting on the remuneration of partners for the purposes of gender pay gap data. The government is considering this recommendation.”

This is a very important caveat! We have checked all the supplied Employer Statements and none include information about partnership payments. This means we do not know which practices data is skewed by the absence of partner payments in the calculations.

For more information about partnerships and WGEA reporting, see here.

Binary data The WGEA data is presented in terms of a gender binary. This data is collected under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, which relates to women and men. Age, location and gender non-binary data is collected on a voluntary basis. The agency explained in 2024:

“WGEA calculates employer gender pay gaps based on women and men. Recognising that gender is a social and cultural concept, since the 2020–21 reporting period, WGEA has created the option for employers to report employee gender as non-binary as a voluntary data category.”

The proportion of employers reporting employee gender as non-binary increased from 8.8% in 2020–21 to 19% in 2022–23. The proportion of non-binary employees in WGEA’s dataset similarly increased to 0.2% from less than 0.1% in 2020–21. These are meaningful changes that suggest a growing awareness of, and attention to, gender diversity in the workplace. However, the non-binary numbers remain small and reporting is voluntary so it has not been used in this analysis.”

Intersectional pay gaps Gender is not the only cause of pay gaps. WGEA states that it recognises the “importance of considering how employees experience multiple and intersecting forms of bias, discrimination, and disadvantage at work.” And that research shows “that women and men from diverse groups can face multiple and compounding disadvantages when participating and progressing in the labour force. These range from inequitable access to employment opportunities and compounding biases in recruitment and promotion to cultural barriers and increased likelihood of discrimination in the workplace.” However, the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 does not extend to collecting data on other demographics. This means the dataset does not contain information on intersectional pay gaps.

Time lag The data reported in March 2025 is for a snapshot period from March–April 2024. This means that the information may not be completely up to date – for example, some practices may have changed their policies.

Number of practices We found 28 architecture and landscape architecture practices, and the Institute of Architects in 2025. This is four more than the 2024 data. Some practices we might expect to see here do not seem to report. Reasons for this are likely to vary – for some, the practice may be structured as completely separate businesses and these parts separately do not reach the 100-employee threshold. Others may not have this number of employees in Australia. It may also be that some organisations that are obliged to report have not done so.

Hames Sharley, which reported in 2024, submitted a ‘corporate group’ this year, which means only limited data is available. We have included this where it is available – pay gap, pay quartiles and workforce composition. We have not included GHD this year. This is because last year GHDWoodhead reported separately, so the data was comparable to other architecture practices; this year only consolidated GHD data is available. As we are not looking at the other large engineering / consulting firms, we have not included GHD data here.

Industry class & benchmarks The WGEA Data Explorer offers a summary for Industry Class 6921 – Architectural Services. Our charts use the industry midpoints from this source. However, there are two practices missing from this information – Gray Puksand and Group GSA are included in other industry classes – while a project management company – Balpara – is included. We have also included the as is the Australian Institute of Architects. This means that the data available on the Data Explorer is a slightly different to our charts.

Accuracy Assembling the data from the WGEA Data Explorer is painstaking, complicated and time-consuming – thanks to Alison McFadyen for doing this work! We have done our best to ensure accuracy. If you identify other errors, please contact us.

What is a gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average or median earnings of women and men across a workforce, expressed as a proportion of men’s earnings. This is not the same as unequal pay, or pay inequity, which refers to the situation in which women are paid less for the same work or work of equal value.

Pay gaps are an index of power and of unequal representation and imbalance in power, influence and even the economic ability to stay in an industry. They contribute to and are driven by inequality. Ensuring pay equity in like-for-like roles is the very first step in addressing pay gaps, but there is a lot more to do beyond that!

The 2025 WGEA data provides both average and median gaps for reporting companies (in 2024, only the median gap was published). Two figures are provided for each of these gaps – the base salary gender pay gap and the total remuneration gender pay gap. The total remuneration figures include bonuses and the like, demonstrating how these can exacerbate gender pay gaps if not monitored closely. As noted above, this does not include payments to partners outside of an employment contract for practices structured as partnerships.

The WGEA pay gap data includes the remuneration of all full-time, part-time and casual employees in the reporting organisations. Where employees work less than full-time, these salaries are converted into full-time equivalent earnings.

Median gender pay gaps

WGEA explains that the median gap is meaningful because it “allows us to understand the remuneration experience of the typical employee at a workplace.” It is very easy to calculate, as WGEA explains:

“A median gender pay gap is found by lining up the pay of every man in the business in order of the smallest to the largest and finding the middle number in that dataset. The same is done for the women in the business. A median employer gender pay gap is the difference between the median of what a man is paid and the median of what a woman in paid in the organisation. Unlike the average, the median is not skewed by extreme values (CEO remuneration, for example), giving us a picture of the typical earnings that exist within an organisation.”

The chart above shows both the median base salary gender pay gap and the median total remuneration gender pay gap for reporting organisations. Where only one dot shows for a practice, there is no difference between these measures.

Median pay gaps were also published in 2024. The chart below compares the Total Remuneration gaps for 2024 (bars) and 2025 (dots). Where there is no bar, the practice did not report in 2024.

Average gender pay gaps

In 2025, WGEA published average pay gaps for the first time. The average gender pay gap shows the collective difference in the remuneration of a group. WGEA explains that “as the average is skewed by high and low salaries, it will show if earnings are particularly concentrated for one gender, for example, more men in higher earning positions.” (Remember, this data does not include payments associated with partnerships outside of employment contracts. This absence may have the effect of lowering the average total remuneration gap for affected practices.)

Comparing median and average gaps is instructive. As the chart at the top of the page shows, many practices have similar gaps in all measures, while others have much bigger average gaps. As noted above, if a company’s average gap is higher than the median gap, a disproportionate number of men in high-income roles is having a greater impact on the gender pay gap. If the average gap is lower than the median, a disproportionate number of women in lower-paying roles has the greater impact.

To explore and compare the various measures, use the filters on the chart below.

Pay quartiles

Pay quartiles divide employees into 4 groups, starting with the highest paid people in an organisation, through to the lowest paid. This year, WGEA has also published the average total remuneration for each pay quartile, along with the average total remuneration for each practice.

But remember the caveat about partner remuneration. This data does NOT include partner earnings paid outside of an employee contract. This is likely to effect the total and upper quartile figures for some practices.

The two charts below show the pay quartiles, with the order of the practices determined by average total remuneration gap for the company as a whole. In the first, the size of the dots reflects the proportion of women in each pay quartile. The second shows the same data with the size of dot determined by the proportion of men.

In the chart below, the size of the dot corresponds to the average total remuneration for the quartile – take note of the proportion of women in each quartile too.

The dot size and the Y axis together show the jump up for upper quartile. Once again, remember that this does not include partnership payments, which would likely increase the upper quartile. (Note, the figures for this chart are slightly different to the WGEA figures for Industry Class 6921 – our chart includes the data from Gray Puksand, Group GSA and the Institute of Architects.)

Gender pay gap policy

Of the practices and organisations reporting to WGEA, 25 had a formal policy on equal remuneration in place, and four did not.

Of the available policy inclusions, only Hassell and FJC have all six. Only seven practices have transparency regarding pay scales / bands and only seven (not the same seven) hold managers accountable for pay equity outcomes. And yet, there is plenty of research and advice that transparency and accountability are fundamental to making change.

Gender pay gap analysis

WGEA asks organisations if they undertook a gender pay gap analysis? If so, what type? And what actions came out of it? Of the 29 practices and organisations reporting, all but two did a pay gap analysis.

The data documents three types of analysis:

A by-level pay gap analysis, which compares the difference between women’s and men’s average pay within the same employee category.
A like-for-like pay gap analysis, which compares the same or similar roles of equal or comparable value to identify unequal pay.
An overall gender pay gap analysis to identify the difference between women’s and men’s average pay and gender composition across the whole organisation

Of the reporting practices, 24 (83%) undertook by-level and 24 undertook like-for-like (but not the same 24 practices). Only 2/3rds (19) of the practices undertook the overall pay gap analysis.

Actions

So, what actions did the 27 practices that undertook some type of pay gap analysis take? WGEA offered 14 options. Some practices did nothing. This seems reasonable for practices already within the target range of +-5% (GroupGSA), but it is concerning that some practices with fairly significant gaps seem to have done little. Sixteen practices (55%) corrected instances of unequal pay (what did the others do?!), while 20 identified the causes of the gaps. Only nine set targets to reduce the gaps.

The list of strategies pursued is a useful guide. These are all strategies that any practice can put in place.

Alison McFadyen painstakingly collected the information about our industry. She and Justine Clark have assembled and mapped this data in graphs and charts. Justine wrote the accomanying texts, including insights from Alison.

Note: This article was updated to include pay quartile data on 8 June 2025.