![Minister for Women Katy Gallagher. Picture by Elesa Kurtz
Minister for Women Katy Gallagher. Picture by Elesa Kurtz](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/209641672/52b7f868-5f39-4caf-8c3f-fca48672da9e.jpg/r7_0_2989_1674_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Australia's Workplace Gender Equality Agency says new gender pay gap laws will accelerate efforts to close the wage disparity between men and women.
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The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment, which passed Parliament with bipartisan support on Thursday, will force companies and public sector agencies with 100 employees or more to publish the pay gaps within their business or organisation from early next year.
The agency's director Mary Wooldridge said the objective of these changes is to make employers more transparent about what's happening at an individual level.
Numbers crunched and published by the agency in February found the gender pay gap dropped from 14.1 per cent last May to 13.3 per cent. That leaves full-time working women with around $253 less in their wallet each week compared to their male counterparts.
Ms Wooldridge said while the past decade has seen progress on workplace gender equality, the rate of change has been slowing.
"This is a significant tool ... for momentum to rebuild," she said.
Ms Wooldridge said there are three key drivers of the gender pay gap, including discrimination against women, time women take out of the workforce for parental and caring responsibilities as well as pay disparities between higher paying masculinised industries and lower paying feminised industries.
The agency has already been collecting gender pay gap data from medium and large companies but these changes will allow that information to be made public for the first time.
Other legislative changes brought in last year will also see the public sector reporting gender pay gap information to the agency for the first time.
Australian Bureau Of Statistics figures cited by the agency, show the public sector already has a smaller pay gap of 11.2 per cent, compared to the private sector's 16.1 per cent.
Ms Wooldridge said the composition of the workforce as a whole was much more balanced in the public sector but more work needed to be done.
Minister for Women Katy Gallagher told The Canberra Times that if better gender balance could be achieved in lower level jobs in the public service "we wouldn't have a gender pay gap".
Senator Gallagher also welcomed the passing of the laws, saying the changes were a critical step towards achieving women's economic equality.
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Ms Wooldridge said evidence from the UK showed that publishing gender pay gaps drives companies to take action.
"They have seen a reduction in the gender pay gap as a result of that transparency," she said.
Ms Wooldridge said the new laws were a "very significant step forward" but she also wanted to see larger employers set targets on the pay gap and take action to reduce it.
She added that it was also important to understand how other groups, including people who identify as non-binary and people who come from different cultural backgrounds, experience inequality in the workplace.