HESTA continues to close gender pay gap

At HESTA, diversity is one of our core values.

We’re focused on creating a diverse and inclusive workplace that champions equality. This is evident in the many ways strong gender equity principles have been embedded into our policies, strategies and ways of working.

Our gender equity plan concentrates on our operations and the HESTA workforce. Through this plan we target gender balance – a ratio of at least 40 per cent women – in our executive team, our people leader cohorts, and across the entire HESTA team.

HESTA has been recognised for our achievements in this space. We’ve been acknowledged as a Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) Employer of Choice for Gender Equality for ten consecutive years¹, as a certified Family-Inclusive Workplace (2024)², and have won the Good Design Award for our hybrid ways of working framework. We hold partnerships with Parents at Work, the Diversity Council of Australia and Pride in Diversity, and have joined the Carers Australia ‘Carer Inclusive Workplace Initiative’.

While we recognise there’s still much more work to do, HESTA’s gender pay gap has improved year on year since establishing our target in 2022, and we remain committed to reducing the gender pay gap.

HESTA has an average 11.8 per cent gender pay gap. Our median gender pay gap is 8.7 per cent. While our median gender pay gap is less than half that of the financial and insurance services sector (26.1 per cent), we’re continuing to work hard to close it.

Having achieved gender balance at HESTA, we have recalibrated our gender equity plan to keep us on track. We’ve set targets to keep improving gender equality, including goals to achieve and maintain gender balance across HESTA as a whole, and at all levels of leadership. We know achieving real change requires transparency and accountability, which is why HESTA has spoken publicly about our pay gap. We will continue to have open and honest conversations with our employees about our gender pay gap and the progress we are making against our goals and targets.

As an employer, advocate and investor, we believe championing gender equality, diversity, and fair and equal remuneration are important areas to improve earning and retirement outcomes for women, and help our members achieve a better financial future.

How we’re working towards gender equality at HESTA

Some of the many gender equity initiatives and ways of working at HESTA, which we believe are key to helping close our gender pay gap, include:

Partnering with organisations to recruit, develop and retain more women in the male-dominated investments sector. That's why we’re focusing on increasing the number of women in our own investments team, particularly in investment management leadership – one of the drivers of our gender pay gap.
Providing a parental support package for all our employees. We contribute super for employees on paid or unpaid parental leave for up to 12 months, helping our working parents keep their super on track, so they can continue to grow their retirement savings while they focus on their families. HESTA also provides support through a Parents at Work program, which includes workshops, webinars, parental support program and 1:1 parental coaching.
Offering flexible ways of working, with a hybrid model that supports people to work from home for a portion of time to help balance life and caring responsibilities.
Partnering on a Returnship Program, which supports women returning to the workforce after extended career breaks.
Increasing awareness and education internally on gender equity, which is vital to fostering a culture of inclusion.

How we’re addressing gender inequality as a long-term systemic issue

The gender pay gap is a symptom of broader gender inequality, a systemic issue.

We believe this inequality not only has a negative financial impact on women throughout their working lives, but also undermines the long-term performance of our members’ investments through their super, and ultimately their retirement outcomes. Research shows fostering a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace can lead to boosted financial performance within companies through improved decision making, governance and innovation.

Addressing this issue requires long-term cultural change to remove the barriers to the full and equal participation of women in the workforce, and other system-level changes. At HESTA, we do this through a deep commitment to responsible investment to continue delivering strong long-term investment returns^{^}, and as a gusty advocate on behalf of our one million-plus members – around 80 per cent of whom are women – to deliver Super with impact™^*.

Our work in this space as a responsible investor and advocate includes:

Engaging directly with ASX300 companies on how they’re planning for and responding to gender inequality as a long-term systemic risk. HESTA will over the coming year continue to engage portfolio companies on gendered factors that contribute to the pay gap, including workplace culture and discrimination, the underrepresentation of women in leadership, and the gender segregation of industries.
Continued governance and coordination of 40:40 Vision, an investor-led initiative – supported by WGEA and other industry partners – that seeks to achieve gender balance in ASX300 executive leadership teams by 2030. In 2024, 40% of ASX300 companies had set 40:40 targets, up again from 2023³.
Voting against select director elections and/or re-elections at ASX300 companies where the board has less than 30 per cent representation of women and against board Chairs of companies employing single gender executive leadership teams.
Shining a light on the hidden costs and economic contribution of unpaid care and why this work needs to be quantified, through HESTA research conducted in partnership with The McKell Institute. Research conducted over 2022 and 2023 found an average of 28 hours is spent providing unpaid care each week and is more likely to be undertaken by women.
Engaging with the Australian mining sector on workplace sexual harassment and gender equality, and publishing key insights and recommendations.
Tracking, measuring and reporting on gender diversity across our investment value chain through a biennial survey of our investment managers.
Advocating for policy reform to make Australia’s super system fairer, including paying super on Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave and improving equity in the distribution of super tax concessions. Following years of advocacy from HESTA and others, the $450 monthly wages threshold for payment of super was scrapped in 2022, ending a long-standing super system inequity that disproportionately impacted women. We were also one of the first Australian super fund to adopt the Simple Super Splitting initiative, a streamlined process that makes splitting super assets easier, faster and fairer when relationships end.

^{^} Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Investments may go up and down. To learn more about how HESTA invests responsibly, go to www.hesta.com.au/investment-excellence-with-impact
^*For more information on Super with impact™, visit www.hesta.com.au/impact