Industry super fund HESTA will leverage its voting power to force some of Australia’s largest publicly listed companies to set gender targets across the entire organisation – not just at the board and executive level – to address the gender pay gap.
HESTA chief executive Debbie Blakey wants companies to set gender targets across the entire organisation.While HESTA has for years pushed for gender equality at the highest echelons of businesses, chief executive Debby Blakey said the agency’s figures highlighted more work was needed across the board to cut the pay gap.
Blakey said the “gender stress gap” between men and women had doubled since 2015, and in 2022 was the largest it had been in the past decade because of rising cost of living pressures.“ thoughtful about how we engage with companies. What are they doing? How are they thinking through this? The jobs with lower security, flexibility and pay are more prevalent, for example, in female-dominated roles and female-dominated sectors,” she said.