Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ)
A young woman graduating from university should be starting her career on a level playing field with her male colleagues.
However, the latest data collected in Australia’s Graduates Outcome Survey for 2025, released last week, show this still isn’t the case.
The survey, run by the Australian National University’s Social Research Centre, looks at the job outcomes and starting salaries of fresh graduates four to six months after finishing their studies.
Results showed newly minted female undergraduates are starting their professional careers on a median full-time annual salary of $75,300, compared with their male colleagues on $79,000.
That’s a 4.7% gap, even before the impacts of family formation and caregiving have kicked in.
On top of this, women even start on lower salaries than their male counterparts in some female-concentrated industries such as nursing and teaching.
A smaller gap but a big issue
The gender pay gap among new university graduates is narrower than Australia’s workforce-wide gender pay gap of 11.5%. However, the workforce-wide gap has generally been shrinking over the past ten years. In contrast, the gender gap in graduates’ starting salaries shows no overall improvement, averaging 3.9% over the past decade.
This disparity can’t be blamed on women working part-time, as these comparisons are based on full-time salaries.
So can it be explained by gender differences in subject choices, with women choosing fields of study that lead to lower-paying professions?
It’s a fair question, given 2021 research shows hourly wage rates in female-concentrated occupations are 9.9% lower than in male-concentrated ones.
But the data suggest that, no, subject choice can’t completely explain the gap either.
Looking at the figures
Even when comparing men and women who graduated in the same field of study, gaps exist in starting salaries in all but five of 19 fields listed in the report that have full data sets.
Some within-field gaps reach as high as 8.6%, such as architecture and built environment. Law and paralegal studies recorded a gap of 7.2%, followed by science and mathematics with 6.8%.
Even in female-concentrated industries, women are starting their careers on the financial back foot. Nursing graduates experienced a gender pay gap of 2.6%. Graduates in teacher education recorded a gap of 3.7%.
The fields where women start on a higher financial footing than their male peers are generally lower-paid to begin with, such as communications and creative arts.
Psychology is the exception where women begin their careers on a median salary that exceeds men’s and is not among the lowest-paid.
What’s driving the disparity?
The Graduate Outcomes Survey report attributes the within-field gender gaps to:
differences in the breadth of graduates’ skillsets, differences in career progression and job switching, life-stage impacts (including caring responsibilities), and personal preferences.
While these factors can play a part, there are also likely to be more complex factors — including gender bias — at play. Let’s look at three possible explanations for the gap.
1. Pay negotiations
One logical explanation might be that male graduates are more inclined to negotiate a higher starting salary. Still, research suggests gender differences in pay negotiations aren’t that straightforward.
Despite widespread advice that women need to “lean in” and be more aggressive in pay negotiations, studies show encouraging women to negotiate more boldly doesn’t always pay off. Showing too much ambition can actually backfire for women. Higher confidence doesn’t correspond to better job prospects for women in the way it does for men.
Researchers attribute this to gender norms that make it more socially acceptable for men to show ambition and assertiveness. Women are more likely to face disapproval and backlash for such boldness, leading them to internalise lower wage expectations.
2. Less opportunity
A second possibility is male graduates are offered more opportunities for higher pay and career advancement.
A Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) analysis, released in March, looked at organisation-level gender pay gaps. The report detected discretionary payments offered above base salaries — such as bonuses, overtime pay and commission — are a big part of the wedge between men’s and women’s total remuneration packages.
It’s not because women don’t put up their hand for these higher-earning opportunities. Research suggests women are less likely to be offered challenging projects that lead to these rewards. In some cases, it might be well-meaning managers who incorrectly presume women are less interested in these stretch assignments — a protective behaviour labelled “benevolent sexism”.
Anticipatory “maybe baby” bias may also play a part. This is when young women are denied good job opportunities merely on an employer’s presumption they will become pregnant at some point and take leave. This can hurt women’s early career opportunities, despite law prohibiting such discrimination.
3. More flexibility
A third possible explanation is that female graduates are trading off more lucrative pay for greater job flexibility. Even if women have not yet reached family formation stage, they could be planning ahead or have other carer responsibilities.
This trade-off turns out to be more complex than women simply opting for lower pay in exchange for flexible work hours.
Nobel Laureate economist Claudia Goldin instead points the finger at the “greedy jobs” that don’t offer such flexibility and instead demand on-call availability and excessively long hours. This is rewarded through higher pay, bonuses and fast-tracked promotions.
Workers with caregiving responsibilities can’t put their hands up for these all-consuming jobs, leading to gender segregation and pay gaps in the workforce.
What can be done about it?
Instead of placing the onus on women to change their choices or behaviours to close these gender gaps, evidence-based research increasingly points to the role of organisations and employers to flush out the gender biases in their practices.
All employers in Australia with 100 or more staff are legally required to report their gender pay gaps to WGEA. The agency encourages organisations to conduct a like-for-like analysis to look for differentials between staff at comparative levels.
This can include a comparison of the pay and project opportunities of men and women starting out at graduate level. This would help ensure newly graduated women step into the workforce on an equal footing to their male peers.
Leonora Risse receives research funding from the Trawalla Foundation and the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia. She serves as an Expert Panel Member for the Fair Work Commission and the Parliamentary Budget Office.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/07/female-graduates-are-earning-less-than-their-male-peers-what-might-be-causing-the-gap/