Drop in the gender pay gap, but it's not all good news

But while women are continuing to be promoted to management roles, the rate of female CEOs remained stagnant in 2017-18.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency will release its latest scorecard on Tuesday, with mixed results showing an increase in employers supporting flexible work and analysing their pay data, but a jump in the gender pay gap in the construction and health industries.

While the base salary gender pay gap was 16.2 per cent, or $15,457 a year, the total remuneration gender pay gap across all industries and occupations was 21.3 per cent, or $25,717 a year. In the five years since the agency has measured the pay gap, this year's 1.1 per cent decrease was the largest yearly change recorded.

The scorecard showed that the number of companies with policies and strategies for pay equity was 61.6 per cent, with 3.2 per cent more companies than this time last year reporting they had strategies or policies around remuneration.

Agency director Libby Lyons said the gender pay gap result was fantastic, and that now the scorecard is in its fifth year, promising data trends are emerging.

"I feel uplifted when I see the results over the five year period and I congratulate those organisations that have already taken steps to address the gender balance in the workplaces," Ms Lyons said.

"But for the rest who haven't I encourage them to do so, and to do so quickly because otherwise they are not going to remain competitive in their industry."

While the rate of female CEOs crept up only slightly, by 0.9 per cent to a rate of 25.8 per cent, Ms Lyons said the data showed promising signs.

"Where we've seen the biggest increase in the percentage of women in management is at that level just under the CEO, so for those reporting in to the CEO we've seen a 4.4 percentage point rise over the five year period," she said.

"If we see that sort of trend continue over the next five years we wont be far off that magic 50-50 number for managers reporting in to CEOs, which means it wont be long before we see more female CEOs."

Melissa Waldron, a senior executive at Canberra consulting and strategy company Accenture, said that she first noticed a push to encourage women in the workplace in the early 2000s, but it was only in recent years, since the company set an official target to have a gender-balanced workforce by 2025, that change had accelerated.

"There's been a lot stronger focus. As much as some people hate targets and they hate dates, if they're not there you don't meet them – you get what you measure," Ms Waldron said.

"There's much much stronger focus now on saying we're absolutely heading for that. Prior to that there was sort of 'best endeavours', but there was always an excuse, so that's taken away a little bit of that excuse layer."

Flexible working arrangements and having more diverse voices in the room were becoming the norm, Ms Waldron said, with companies moving away from the old-fashioned policies built around single-income families.

When it came to female representation at the most senior levels, Ms Waldron recalled a story told to her by one of the company's female board members about how a critical mass of women was needed to make change.

"One woman is token, two women is a minority, but three women is a voice," she said.

For Blake Woodward, talking about parenting and flexible working arrangements isn't just an issue for women. As a new dad, the manager at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Canberra took nine months of his son's first 14 months off, acting as primary carer for much of that time to allow his wife to go back to work. He now works four days a week, taking one day a week to care for his almost two-year-old son Samuel while his wife has returned to work full time.

The company was not only supportive of Mr Woodward taking leave, but when he told his boss about his impending fatherhood, he was encouraged to take leave.

"He's also a dad and has taken parental leave twice himself. His first response was 'you are taking parental leave aren't you?' and was completely encouraging, made sure that I was aware of all the policies and that I absolutely had his full endorsement," Mr Woodward said.

While outside of the workplace others asked him if he had projects to keep him occupied while on parental leave, there was no stigma at work - rather there was a wish to increase the visibility of men taking leave as new parents.

"The message was: 'please keep telling people that it's OK', because there is that stigma out there. Even though we have the policies, having a policy isn't enough, we still need to be encouraging others that it is actually acceptable to take the leave," Mr Woodward said.