Workplace Gender Equality Agency Gender Pay Gap Employer Statement 2025 for Australia

Our vision is to be a law firm known for our insight and diverse perspectives in Australia. A high-performing culture of respect, belonging and inclusion is key to achieving this vision and delivering on our strategy.

We are required to submit data to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) as part of its annual gender pay gap report.

As part of this, we have provided an overview of our gender pay gap - the difference in average earnings between men and women, regardless of their role or seniority, for all employees.

This year, our gender pay gap data in Australia has been broken down into:

1. all employees firmwide;
2. legal employees (excluding partners and business services); and
3. business services employees.

Our average total remuneration gender pay gap in Australia is 17.1%, and the median is 16.2%. This remains lower than the national average of 21%.

Men and women are paid equally for equivalent roles across our firm (this is known as pay equity, which WGEA does not measure). We have robust remuneration processes to monitor pay equity throughout the employee lifecycle, including checks against bias.

Our pay gap is driven by the type of roles within our firm and the distribution of men and women performing those roles. There is a higher proportion of women in administrative and business services roles across the firm. This distribution, rather than an absence of women in senior-level roles, is the primary reason for our employee gender pay gap.

A higher proportion of women in casual or part-time work, also contributes to our pay gap.

We remain committed to supporting greater gender balance across our firm. Our 8 Drivers for Gender Equity outline our steps to achieve this. This includes flexible and agile work, our parental leave offering (up to 26 weeks paid leave and 12 months paid superannuation), leadership development and investment in talent pipeline.

The remainder of this statement provides additional data and further detail on our steps to support gender equity.
 

Gender pay gap data

All employees firmwide

Legal employees

Business Services

Supporting greater gender balance

We are proud to support a diverse, high-performing and inclusive environment through our programs. We regularly assess our programs to ensure they are impactful and evidence-based, are guided by the best interests of our people, clients, and firm, and are consistent with our values.

Our targets remain unchanged - since we first set global gender targets in 2014, we've more than doubled the number of women in the global partnership (from 18% to 33%). By May 1, 2030, we aim for women to comprise 40% of partners and partner leadership roles globally. In Australia, 39% of partners are women. Our 8 Drivers for Gender Equity outline the steps we are taking to achieve greater gender balance.

All organisations have a role to play in encouraging the uptake of parental leave among men. Since launching our new policy in 2022, we’ve seen a consistently high proportion of men take parental leave. Of those who commenced parental leave in 2023-24, 41% of lawyers and 35% of business services employees were men - significantly higher than the average of 19% in the legal services industry.

Our parental leave policy offers up to 26 weeks paid leave and superannuation pay for one year. Paying superannuation on the unpaid portion of parental leave is an important step to address the gender pay gap. We also continue to have no distinction between primary and secondary carers, meaning the policy is available to all eligible parents, regardless of family structure.

For further information please contact Matthew Clements, Senior Diversity and Inclusion Manager.