More part-time bosses and co-CEOs could keep women in leadership and narrow Australia’s pay gap

Uneven caring responsibilities combined with a lack of flexible work options have prevented women from staying in senior positions, research suggests

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More part-time bosses and “co-CEOs” could keep women in leadership and narrow Australia’s gender pay gap, the federal government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency says.

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.

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 and senior roles.

Full-time women were promoted more often than men in 2024-25, according to the report’s analysis of WGEA data covering 5.4 million employees.

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%.

WGEA’s chief executive, Christine Castley, said uneven caring responsibilities combined with a lack of flexible work options had prevented women from staying in senior positions.

“There 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’t apply to management roles,” Castley said.

Most women still either stop working or work part-time after having their first child, according to the report’s analysis of Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) data.

Leadership could be dominated by men even in industries where most workers were women, the report found.

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.

Castley said employers could think creatively about reforms to keep women in senior roles, including allowing grandparents to access carer’s leave or rostering to fit school drop-off and pickup.

“We’re seeing increasingly the use of – even at the CEO level – co-CEOs, who are essentially job-sharing a role.”

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.

Employers with flexible work strategies tended to employ more women at every level of senior management.

Dr Silvia Salazar, a report co-author, said parents sharing care responsibility would also play a role.

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.

The report found 33% employers were not funding additional paid parental leave.

“Employers 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,” Salazar said.

Workplace equality metrics have improved in recent years but policies addressing gendered inequality have faced growing hostility, especially among Australian youth.

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

Castley said the agency aimed to provide objective data in the face of growing scepticism over gender equity.

“Certainly many people who have worked in this space have a bit of a sense that the conversation’s moved a few steps backwards from where it was,” Castley said.

“We 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.”