HESTA continues to close gender pay gap

At HESTA, fostering inclusion 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 — defined as 40% women, 40% men, and 20% any gender — 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 over a decade¹, and as a certified Family-Inclusive Workplace since 2021². 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 9.9% gender pay gap³. Our median gender pay gap is 8.4%⁴, less than half that of the financial and insurance services sector which sits at 19.7%. While this is encouraging, we remain dedicated to working hard to close this gap.

Having achieved balanced gender representation 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: 

• Addressing gender segregation by developing internal strategies to recruit, develop and retain more women in traditionally male-dominated sectors.
  
  
• Working, in collaboration with industry, to research and implement strategies that increase women's representation in Investment Management, with a particular focus on leadership positions to address our gender pay gap.

• Providing a parental support package for all our employees, which includes making superannuation contributions during parental leave for up to 12-months, and providing support through HESTA's Parents at Work program which includes workshops, webinars, a parental support program and 1:1 parental coaching. 
  
  
• Challenging gender stereotypes that promote inequity by encouraging all employees to take parental leave, and work flexibly. In the past 12 months, around 50% of those who took parental leave at HESTA were men.

• 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. 

• Increasing awareness and education internally on gender equity, which is vital to fostering a culture of inclusion. 
  
  
• Engaging with international gender equity experts and thought leaders to address workplace gender equality through education on pay gaps, occupational segregation, and cultural barriers, drawing on expertise from leading advocacy organizations and public policy specialists.

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

Gender equality is an enabler of a growing, sustainable, and inclusive economy. When gender inequality persists, it can harm economic performance, affect investment returns, and impact the retirement outcomes of HESTA members - around 80% of whom are women.

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 in leadership, and other system-level changes. At HESTA, we do this through a deep commitment to responsible investment with an aim to continue delivering strong long-term investment returns^{^}, and as a gutsy advocate on behalf of our one million-plus members 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 can build inclusive and equitable workplace cultures and gender diverse leadership teams. HESTA will over the coming year continue to engage some 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 2025, 44% of ASX300 companies had set 40:40 targets, up 5% from 2024⁵.

• HESTA exercised its voting rights and voted against directors at over 50 ASX companies in the 2025 Annual General Meeting season, leveraging shareholder power to address gender diversity gaps - specifically targeting boards with less than 30% women representation and companies with single-gender executive leadership teams.
  
  
• Committed to progressing toward 40:40 gender balance across the Fund's investment value chain, which was tracked through the Gender Diversity in Investment Management 2024 progress survey and report. This is a biennial assessment of gender representation and workplace policies of HESTA’s external investment partners.

^{^} 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.

¹ WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation holders: https://www.wgea.gov.au/what-we-do/employer-of-choice-for-gender-equality/current-eocge-citation-holders

² Certified Family Inclusive Workplaces: https://familyfriendlyworkplaces.com.au/certified-employers/

³ HESTA’s average total remuneration pay gap for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025

⁴ HESTA’s median total remuneration gender pay gap for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025

⁵ 2025 CEW Census: https://cew.org.au/hubfs/25_01%20CEW%20CENSUS%20ACC%20FINAL.pdf?hsLang=en-au