Australian women earning 20,000 dollars less than men: report

Australian women are earning 23 percent less than men on average, a study has found.

The study, published by Australia's Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), said that Australian men made 20,000 US dollars more than women on average in the financial year ending in 2016.

Data collected from 12,000 Australian employers and four million employees revealed that the wage disparity grew at the top level of management, where men made 70,000 US dollars more than women.

Libby Lyons, director of WGEA, said the main reason for the gender pay gap was "bias and discrimination."

"I think in 2016 we shouldn't still be talking about a pay gap," Lyons said on Wednesday.

"But, I think that there are some positive signs on the horizon."

Lyons said that the pay gap had slightly closed in the past year, down 1.6 per cent to 23.1 per cent, but there was still a long way to go.

"I think the obvious reason for the decline in the gender pay gap is the fact that organizations are recognizing that this is a problem, that it is not fair that women are paid less than men and are actually taking their own action to do a gender pay gap analysis, and to sort the problem out in their own workplace," Lyons told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

"This year, for the first time, our data that shows that over 70 per cent of employers have policies in place to improve gender equality."

Lyons said the most disappointing aspect of the study was the small number of high-level positions held by women.

"We still see that five out of six CEOs are men and three out of four board directors are men," she said.

"I think what we have to do is get women into the pipeline that feeds management.

"There is another encouraging piece of data that's come out of this and this has shown that women, for the first time, received 42 per cent of promotions and appointments into managerial roles." Endit