The WGEA data for 2024 shows we reduced our median gender pay gap from 19.3% to 15.8%. This is the third consecutive year we have reduced our pay gap.
WGEA states that the pay gap has been closed when it sits between –5% and +5%. Our stats show we are ahead of our industry peers and still have work to do.
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.
Female representation at Architectus
Put simply, the pay gap can only close when there is a balance of women and men in senior roles in our practice. How we have improved:
- Our Executive Management Group (EMG) is 50% women and the Executive Director representation on our board is 50% women.
- 62% of our student intake and 51% of our graduates are women.
- In calendar year 2024, women accounted for 50% of our promotions.
- In FY25, women account for 65% of our new hires.
It is clear we are significantly falling short at Principal level and Senior Associate level for female representation. We also need a better balance at an Associate and Senior Architect level, as this is a fundamental pipeline for our future female leaders. Alongside internal talent growth discussion, we approach all recruitment with a strategic gender lens.
In acknowledgement of the significant role that motherhood plays in the gender pay gap, Architectus has invested $5.8 million on our industry-leading Parental Leave policy since 2018.
The main reason Architectus has a gender pay gap is because of the proportionately low representation of women at our senior levels. We also know that meaningful action leads to change.
We established our Parental Leave Policy in 2018 specifically as an initiative to keep women in our practice after they have children. We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both mothers and fathers accessing the long-format leave, however our data tells us that retention has only marginally improved and that the average tenure for our second-time mothers returning to work is only 6 months. This is a concerning statistic and an area we want to know more about.
When we look at our data, of the 122 people who accessed our 16-week paid parental leave benefit, more than 64% were female. When we look at our team who work in a part time capacity 70% are female. This data, alongside representation of women at senior levels has us asking some questions.
Our research question is:
How do our current parental leave policies, including return to work practices, impact the experience of men and women who return to work after an extended period of parental leave?
In 2025, we want to hear from current, and past team members who accessed our extended paid parental leave for a first and second time. Through surveys and interviews we will uncover the lived experience of our policies and return to work practices. Including our male team members in the conversation will help us identify differences and similarities in experiences and gain insight into how we can better support and retain women through the early years of parenting.
We view an improvement in gender representation of women in senior leadership positions as key to reducing our Gender Pay Gap.
In 2025, we will continue to be guided by WGEA gender equality principles including:
- Workforce composition: continue to measure and analyse workforce participation by gender.
- Remuneration analysis: continue to monitor and analyse the gender pay gap and work to further reduce the difference in earnings between men and women.
- Flexible work: continue to evaluate policies that support flexibility for our teams with family and caring responsibilities starting with our research initiative.
- Our team’s experience: engage with our teams about the difference in gender participation in the workforce starting with our research initiative.
- Zero tolerance for sexual harassment: maintain a zero-tolerance stance on sexual harassment on the grounds of sex or discrimination.