Our median gender pay gap for the reporting period (1 Apr 2024 to 31 Mar 2025) increased to 20.9%, up from 15.8% the prior year. It’s the first time in four years we haven’t reduced our gap at Architectus.
WGEA states that the pay gap has been closed when it sits between –5% and +5%.
In our industry and in our practice, men still hold more senior leadership positions than women. Forces that contribute to this include:
-Having children: Women are more likely to take extended leave after having children.
-Working part-time: Mothers are more likely to return to work part-time after having children and our industry does not yet widely offer meaningful and sustainable part-time roles.
-Presence of senior female role models: A scarcity of women in leadership positions can be a self-perpetuating cycle.
-Unconscious bias: Unconscious bias affects everyone and is triggered by our brain automatically making quick judgements and assessments. This can be an underlying factor that impacts the advancement of women.
First, small movements at senior leadership levels have a significant impact on our overall gap at Architectus. These positions attract higher remuneration, so any imbalance in gender at these levels is amplified when the median is calculated across the practice. This is why gender balance is so critical to closing the pay gap.
Second, most applicants for Principal and Associate Principal positions in our practice tend to be male. In the 2024-25 reporting period all appointments at these levels were male, and one female Principal also left the practice. These numbers had a significant impact on our gender pay gap.
Looking at the data more generally, we have improved gender balance across most position levels within the practice. We maintain our commitment to robustly reviewing annual remuneration and salaries at promotion time to ensure equity.
One key area we need to work on is external appointments. Our organisation has targeted strategies to reduce our gender pay gap in this area. In simple terms, we’ll ensure we look at appointments within the context of our gender pay gap profile overall.
In 2026 we’ll continue to work toward closing our gender pay gap. We’ll be taking action in the following areas, aligned with WGEA’s gender equality principles:
-Workforce composition: measuring and analysing workforce participation by gender and implementing strategies to achieve balance
-Remuneration: continued commitment to ensuring equitable remuneration across the practice
-Female leadership: ongoing focus on succession and development planning for future appointments
-Flexible work: evaluating policies for staff with family and caring responsibilities and sharing insights from our parental leave research due to conclude in April 2026
-Employee experience: consulting with staff via our engagement surveys, parental leave research, and other initiatives to gain a better understanding of gender-related challenges, and
-Zero tolerance for discrimination: maintaining a zero-tolerance stance on sex-based discrimination or harassment.