Gender Equality advocate defends implication new pay gap data is 'misleading'

Workplace Gender Equality Agency Chief Executive Mary Wooldridge says the newly released data in Australia’s largest companies is important information for people to “understand” the gender pay-gap. Ms Wooldridge explained the data did not compare men and women carrying out the same roles within a company but instead expanded to evaluate an entire company. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency CEO defended the “internationally recognised” procedure as Sky News presenter Peter Stefanovic pressed her on whether the data could be misleading. “We are very upfront and open that it measures something different to equal pay and what the employers have said quite comprehensively is it reflects different composition,” she said. Ms Wooldridge said the data was released to encourage how companies think about trying to “balance the genders all the way through the organisations”.