Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand is empowering its members to address the profession’s gender pay gap.
“The gender pay gap is not something that you should avoid, or you should be scared of. It's there to be identified, to be measured, to be narrowed. The longer you avoid it, the harder addressing it will become for you.”
This is the compelling advice professional body Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) provides to encourage its members to address the gender pay gap in the accounting profession.
Closing the sector’s gender pay gap is critical work for CA ANZ and it’s 140,000 global members — 31,000 of whom are based in Aotearoa New Zealand.
CA ANZ leaders are outspoken in their journey, as they work alongside their members’ organisations to help close their individual gender pay gaps.
Some of the Chartered Accountants ANZ team catch up for a morning coffee meeting.
“It's critically important for women that we close the pay gap.” - Lydia Tsen.
CA ANZ New Zealand Government Affairs Leader, Lydia Tsen, says the cumulative effect of the gender pay gap on earnings over an entire career and then on subsequent retirement savings has a long-term negative financial impact on women compared to men.
“It is really important to CA ANZ that we lead the way as a peak body. One of our roles is to educate and empower our members to be able to be the difference makers that they are,” said Lydia Tsen.
CA ANZ invites its members to take part in an annual remuneration survey. One purpose of the survey is to measure the successes — and the challenges — and track progress to close the gender pay gap in the profession.
CA ANZ reports that in 2024, its New Zealand members had a collective gender pay gap of 22% and in Australia it was 18%.
Lydia Tsen says businesses avoiding this issue will not be able to attract talented employees in the future, who are likely to ask if their prospective employer has a gender pay gap and importantly, if they do, what they are doing to close it.
Members balancing the books
Tax Traders Co-CEO Tim Kirkpatrick CA, alongside his fellow Co-CEO Becki Butler, values individual action coupled with sector level accountability.
The Tax Traders team catching up to discuss how their workplace addresses pay gaps and gender equity, including helping new parents take equal parental leave.
“This is an issue that will only be solved as each of us individually in our respective businesses actually take tangible actions to address the gaps that exist within our own teams, and then the societal level data will reflect that,” says Tim Kirkpatrick.
“Addressing the gender pay gap makes both human sense and commercial sense." - Becki Butler.
On recruitment and pay reviews, Tim Kirkpatrick asks “Are we paying appropriate value for the work that someone is doing here?”
The answer requires meaningful action.
“Too often, people are paid based on what they were earning at their previous role, plus a little bit. Where we have seen contributions being undervalued - and it's mostly been instances where women have come from roles that probably undervalued their contribution - we've been intentionally rectifying that.”
The team at William Buck New Zealand work together to identify their organisation's important values, including teamwork and diversity.
Leaders at William Buck New Zealand report on the company’s gender pay gap annually.
“You need to get to the bottom of why there is a gender pay gap. If you know why there is, then you can start to address the situation." - Tania Snowdon, Partner.
The company has a fairly even gender balance among its workforce.
Tania’s partner colleague, Courtney West CA, says “Businesses need to be aware that there's lots of females in the accounting industry. We're good at our jobs, we know what we're doing, so there shouldn't be a gender pay gap.”
“Tania and I are both examples of that and we've both made it to partner, so there's definitely a career out there,” says Courtney West.
In summing up the workforce at William Buck New Zealand, Tania Snowdon says “I'm not judging people by their gender. I am seeing people equally. I am rewarding people for their ability.”
Kathryn Cropp CA, Director at Baker Tilley Staples Rodway, says its important to mentor women's leadership in the accounting profession.
Kathryn Cropp CA is a Director at Baker Tilly Staples Rodway.
She’s a mother of two girls, who wants her daughters to see women can have whatever career or leadership opportunity they choose.
Female empowerment at home follows her to work, and the business has systems in place to ensure tangible action translates into system-level change.
“That goes from the very beginning when we recruit staff and mentor students, through interview processes, right through to help them become leaders in business,” says Kathryn Cropp.
“We've got safeguards in place to make sure we have female representation on our remuneration committee to make sure that we stop, check and review the decisions that we've made to make sure that we've had no gender bias in our decision-making processes.”
“We need to continually focus on training and mentoring of all our staff into those leadership roles and make sure they understand that there are equal opportunities for them.” - Kathryn Cropp.
Some of the resources available in Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand's gender equity hub to help address pay gaps and advance gender equity in the accounting profession.
CA ANZ is helping its members have healthy and difference-making conversations. The gender equity hub on its website is updated on International Women’s Day each year, and features thought-provoking and ‘how to’ resources including a link to the free Ministry for Women gender pay gap calculator and toolkit.
“It's important that they're able to come to us with their questions about the gender pay gap, to seek resources from us that they need to be able to address it within their own organisations,” says Lydia Tsen from CA ANZ.
“It's important that we keep having the conversation, we keep raising awareness, we keep educating what the pay gap is.”