New SAGE data released this week makes one thing unmistakably clear: the gender pay gap is not an unavoidable feature of organisational life. It is a choice and the organisations that choose to act are pulling decisively ahead of those that don’t.

SAGE’s Progress and Backsliding: Gender Pay Gap in the University and Research Sectors Report Card, analysing the latest Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) data, reveals a stark and growing divide.

Organisations participating in the SAGE Athena Swan program have a median total remuneration gender pay gap that is 37% lower, on average, than their sector peers. Those not taking action have watched their gaps widen.

Over just three years, the difference between SAGE member and non-member universities has tripled, from 1 percentage point to 3.1, and the gap between member and non-member public sector science research agencies now stands at over 7 percentage points.

The Burnet Institute offers one of the most striking proofs of what’s possible. Ten years into their Athena Swan journey, Burnet has achieved a negative gender pay gap of -2.4%, a 13.9 percentage point turnaround in just three years. This did not happen by accident. It happened because the organisation made sustained, institution-wide commitments to change.

So what does that change actually look like in practice? 

1. Audit,Then Actually Act on the Findings

The first step is understanding where your pay gap comes from. Almost 95% of SAGE member organisations have conducted a gender pay gap audit, compared to 72% of non-members. But the audit alone is not the point.

The real differentiator is what organisations do after the audit. Nearly 87% of SAGE members have taken action on their audit findings, compared to just 52% of non-members. And 71% of members have gone further to identify the root causes of their pay gaps, compared to only 41% of non-members.

Without understanding why a gap exists – whether it’s driven by occupational segregation, limited women in senior roles, bias in pay-setting, or the cumulative effect of career interruptions – organisations cannot fix it.

What to do:

Break down your pay data by level, classification, faculty or division, and employment type. Look for patterns and identify where women are clustered in lower-paid roles and absent from senior ones. Bring findings to your executive and board — then build a specific, time-bound action plan.

Establish a formal equal pay policy (92% of SAGE members have one, versus 72% of non-members) to create accountability structures around how pay decisions are made. 

2. Redesign Recruitment to Remove Invisible Bias

Biased recruitment is one of the most powerful and least visible forces maintaining gender inequality. Advertisements written in overly masculine language, all-male panels, and unstructured interviews that reward confidence over competence all work against gender equity, even when no one intends them to.

The University of Newcastle took this head-on, identifying 25 positions for targeted recruitment as part of their Enabling Change program. They built gender-balanced panels, crafted gender-inclusive position descriptions, and deliberately created safe interview experiences.

Their most important finding: where female representation on recruitment panels was 50% or higher, appointments of women were significantly more successful. Where female panel representation sat at just 25–33%, results were more modest. Who sits at the table during recruitment shapes who gets the job. 

What to do:

Audit your job advertisements for gendered language. Require gender-balanced shortlists and recruitment panels as a formal policy and if you can’t form a balanced panel internally, look outside your immediate team. Train panel members to assess non-linear career paths and a person’s work output, productivity, and achievements based on the opportunities actually available to them, rather than against a standard, uninterrupted, or full-time career trajectory (relative-to-opportunity contributions).

3. Make Flexibility a Team Norm, Not an Individual Negotiation

One of the primary structural drivers of the gender pay gap is women’s disproportionate share of unpaid caring work. When flexibility is only available on a case-by-case basis, or carries cultural stigma, women pay a career penalty for caregiving that men largely do not.

The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) modelled what genuine embedded flexibility looks like through their Flex @ WEHI program.

The critical shift: from an individual to a team-based approach. Rather than each staff member negotiating private arrangements with their supervisor, teams collaboratively develop shared protocols covering when and how they connect, communicate and collaborate. This normalises flexibility, removes the stigma of using it, and prevents the hidden tax of flexibility falling disproportionately on women.

What to do:

Move beyond ad hoc flexibility arrangements. Develop a formal, principles-based flexible work policy and introduce team-level protocols that make flexibility a collective, normalised practice. Review your parental leave entitlements, actively encourage men and all genders to take leave, and monitor take-up rates by gender to identify and address cultural barriers. 

4. Invest Deliberately in Women’s Career Progression

The gender pay gap is heavily driven by the underrepresentation of women in senior roles. Women accumulate disadvantage throughout their careers — they are less likely to apply for promotion, more likely to carry heavier administrative loads relative to research output, and more likely to experience career disruption from caring responsibilities. Without deliberate intervention, these patterns compound.

Swinburne University of Technology tackled this through the Swinburne Women’s Academic Network (SWAN) – a grassroots ecosystem created by academic women, for academic women. What began in 2015 as a peer promotion program has grown into four interconnected programs: a Peer Promotion Program supporting women to prepare promotion applications; a Career Development Program offering workshops and coaching; Grant It, supporting women through ARC grant applications; and an Academic Carer’s Financial Assistance Program providing small grants to staff whose research has been disrupted by caring responsibilities.

SWAN’s impacts are measurable: more women promoted to senior levels, more women-led research grant applications, and policy changes at the institutional level — including relative-to-opportunity statements in promotion templates and a revised travel policy more accommodating of staff with carer responsibilities.

The University of Southern Queensland has also shared how they built a dedicated equity, diversity and inclusion dashboard making data on progress visible to all employees as a way of driving engagement and accountability. Visibility matters: when staff can see where things stand, they are better placed to advocate for change.

What to do:

Map where women are lost from your career pipeline and why. Introduce structured promotion support programs targeting key career transition points. Fund grants or fellowships to support staff whose careers have been interrupted by caring responsibilities. Redesign promotion criteria to account for relative-to-opportunity contributions and make sure the data that drives these decisions is visible to all staff. 

5. Achieve Genuine Parity in Leadership and Governance

Closing the gender pay gap requires women to hold positions of institutional power. SAGE member universities have achieved something remarkable: women now comprise 52.5% of governing body members, an 11.8 percentage point advantage over non-member universities. This reflects years of deliberate board succession planning and a genuine commitment to parity at the highest level.

At the executive level, SAGE member universities similarly lead their peers, with women comprising 50.9% of leaders compared to 48.8% at non-members.

For medical research institutes and public sector science research agencies, the numbers are more troubling: women in leadership in these sectors sit around 37-40%, with almost no difference between member and non-member organisations. There is significant work yet to do. 

What to do:

Set explicit gender targets for your governing board and senior executive, and be transparent about where you currently stand. Review board nomination processes and actively develop women candidates through board-readiness programs. Require gender-balanced shortlists for all executive appointments, and reflect gender equity expectations in your CEO’s performance framework. 

6. Build the Culture That Makes Change Last

Data alone doesn’t change organisations. Behind every pay gap number is a set of norms, assumptions and power dynamics that either support or undermine equity. SAGE member organisations are addressing culture in concrete ways: RMIT University’s Respectful Research Training Program tackles power dynamics in staff-student relationships; Griffith University prevents the unintentional misgendering of transgender and gender diverse staff through preferred names in institutional systems.

These initiatives share something in common: they attend to the lived experience of people at work, not just the headline metrics.

What to do:

Invest in training and culture-building that goes beyond compliance. Ensure your HR systems, policies and processes accommodate gender diversity and caring responsibilities. Adopt an intersectional lens: gender equity that does not incorporate race, disability, sexuality and other dimensions of identity will always remain incomplete.

The Bottom Line

The most important finding in this year’s data is not any single number. It is the pattern: organisations that do the analytical work and take sustained, systemic action achieve better outcomes across every measure. Those that audit but don’t act are falling behind and fast. 

The examples above are by no means an exhaustive list with our members undertaking many different actions that are improving gender equity and building cultures for lasting change.

But the pathway is clear: understand your data, identify the root causes, build an action plan, implement it with accountability, and don’t stop. The gender pay gap is a choice not to take action.

What choice will your organisation make?

This article draws on SAGE’s Progress and Backsliding: Gender Pay Gap in the University and Research Sectors Report Card, released 31 March 2026, analysing WGEA Employer Data Explorer 2024–2025 data.