The market segments most impacted by the gender pay gap are finance and engineering, where women are paid much less than men partly because they generate smaller bonuses.
Australian-first figures for all companies with 100 or more employees show women in finance are paid 28.4 per cent less in base salary than men. When bonuses and perks are included the gap is 36 per cent.
Workplace Gender Equality Agency director, Helen Conway, said this week the problem stems from the fact that there are so few women in senior positions.
Across the workforce generally, the gender pay gap for base remuneration is 19.9 per cent. That rises to 25 per cent in terms of total remunderation.
Women are paid less than men in all industries, but it is much greater in engineering where the gap is 24 per cent lower.
According to a 2013 survey conducted by Graduate Careers Australia’s (GCA), the starting salaries of male university graduates under 25 were on average 9.4 per cent higher than females.
Engineering degrees were represented by 24.6 per cent of men, to only 3.7 per cent of women.
The broader Australian labour market gender wage gap favours men by 17.1 per cent, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data.
Industry group, Engineers Australia, said the barriers to women pursuing a career in engineering are lifting.
The chair of Engineers Australia’s Women in Engineering Committee, Nee Nee Ong, said that in the last five years the number of women graduating with engineering degrees has increased significantly.
Despite the improvements, Ong said women still only make up 11.2 per cent of the engineering labour force.
"For the most part, women engineers are earning less than their male counterparts and women are found to be in fewer decision-making roles," she said.
"Our main area of concern with this gender imbalance is that we are significantly underutilising a key part of our highly skilled workforce, which is clearly detrimental to Australia’s economic, productivity and growth agenda," Ong said.