They're the lucky ones. The annual snapshot of pay and jobs for women in the private sector shows women in full-time work still earn $25,700 less than men (not counting chief executives).

It's improving. Five years ago, women earned 25 per cent less than men; now it's 21 per cent. It varies markedly between industries. The biggest pay gap is in the financial services industry, where women earn 29 per cent less than men - an average of $48,300 in total remuneration).

Then comes real estate (27 per cent less, or $38,000) and construction (26 per cent less, or $35,100). Among industries with the smallest gaps are accommodation and food (12 per cent, or an average $9600) and education (9 per cent, $10,900).

Women are being appointed more often to manager jobs, now making up 39 per cent of managers (36 per cent five years ago), but are still not cracking the chief executive code.

Just 17 per cent of chief executives are women, compared with 16 per cent five years ago. And there is little progress in the boardroom, where more than a third of boards have no female directors, and only 27 per cent of board members are women overall (up 1 point on last year).

Ms Billington fits in the bill. She's part of the AECOM leadership group in NSW and the ACT - 70 per cent are women - but the firm nevertheless currently has men in the top three roles, chief executive, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer.

She confirms the firm has a pay gap, but she believes she can close it in two years, ensuring women doing the same job as men to the same standard are paid the same. She has come to suspect one of the reasons women slip behind is because they tend to stay longer in their jobs, so lose the opportunity to jump through the pay scales.

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In her own career, Ms Billington, who has three children aged 6, 4 and 1, and whose husband is a partner in a financial advice firm, has been prepared to move. Since her days as an engineering student - when she said she had to put up with fellow students making derogatory comments about how she got good marks - she has experienced workplaces with very male cultures. To move up, she has had to "navigate blockages".

"When I hit a roadblock, I find a way move around it," she says. She does that by creating roles for herself and getting a seat at the table to persuade organisations to change. She also took charge of her her personal style, discovering after a 360 feedback survey from peers that she had a "directive" style.

So she moved to a job where she had no direct reports, and had to find ways to persuade people to find a common vision.

Ms Billington said she had to learn "soft skills" of influence, communication and inspiration, the kinds of skills that mean you can present to a room full of senior executives just days into a new project, trust yourself, and gain their confidence.

Perhaps this is something men are better at than women? "They throw themselves into the hot fire and they succeed," Ms Billington says to that suggestion.

The government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency has been collecting data from firms with more than 100 staff for six years. This year, the snapshot covered 4.3 million employees.

It found virtually no change in the proportion of women in the workplace or their full time part time status. Forty per cent of women are full time; 67 per cent of men are full time. Thirty-two per cent of women are part-time, compared with just 11 per cent of men.

While 45 per cent of firms are analysing their pay data to check equity, well under half of those took action to close the gap.

The snapshot said pay gaps were influenced by discrimination and bias and factors such as bonuses at senior levels, but also by women and men working in different industries, women taking on a bigger share of the home and caring work, the under-representation of women in senior roles, and women spending a greater time out of the workforce.

Only two of 19 industries have more female managers than male - education (63 per cent of the workforce, 52 per cent of managers) and health/social assistance (80 per cent of the workforce, 70 per cent of managers).

Just under 50 per cent of workplaces now offer paid parental leave and 60 per cent have a domestic violence policy - up 13 points in a year.