Gender pay gap and Gender Equity Strategy and Plan

Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland is committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace for our diverse communities of staff. Gender pay gaps are broad indicators of workplace culture and conditions. Owning our numbers helps us understand the areas where we need to focus our efforts and is the first step in addressing the systemic issues that produce these gaps.

The 2025 gender pay gap for Waipapa Taumata Rau is 6.3%, down from 11.9% in 2024, showing progress over time.

Gender pay gaps are calculated by comparing median hourly pay rates between genders. Our gender pay gap of 6.3% means that the median hourly rate for all staff who are women is 6.3% lower than the median hourly rate for all staff who are men.

According to Stats NZ, the nationwide gender pay gap was 5.2% in 2025, providing important national context for understanding our results.

The gender pay gap is about overall differences in earnings across genders in an organisation. This is different to equal pay and pay equity. There are many causes of gender pay gaps, including inequities in the labour market and society that result from long-held views and practices around gender roles.  

This is the third year the University has reported its gender pay gap, allowing trends to begin to emerge and providing a clearer evidence base to guide future action.

This year’s report includes gender pay gaps for women in different ethnic groups. It also includes analyses of potential drivers of gender pay gaps such as unequal pay, distribution of genders across roles with different salaries and the distribution of genders at different levels within roles.

Important findings

• Overall gender pay gap is 6.3%
• Academic staff pay gap is 4.9%, down from 16.1% in 2023. There is no evidence of unequal pay within academic role categories. Analysis shows the academic pay gap is largely driven by the under-represented in senior traditional academic roles.
• Professional staff pay gap is –0.2%, indicating overall University’s definition of parity. However, women remain over-represented in lower B-E bands and under-represented in high J-Q bands, and there is evidence of unequal pay in the F-I bands.
• Persistent gaps remain from several ethnic groups, particularly Pacific (18.4%), Asian (16.1%) and Middle Eastern, Latin American and African communities (11.9%) communities.  

Previous reports

We have developed our first Gender Equity Strategy and Plan, which sets out how the University will advance gender equity through sustained and transparent action, and is informed directly by the gender pay gap findings.

The strategy focuses on gender and gender-ethnicity intersections, recognising that different groups may experience different barriers.

The Gender Equity Strategy and Plan was developed in collaboration with the Gender Action Plan Group who include academic and professional staff with diversity, equity and inclusion responsibilities or expertise, as well as representatives from staff networks, students, and unions.

The strategy includes the following interconnected workstreams:

• Equitable recruitment
• Equitable renumeration and career progression
• Wellbeing, culture and capability
• Evaluation, transparency and continuous improvement

Across the workstreams are 29 deliverables designed to improve decision-making conditions and reduce bias across systems and processes.  

Progress on gender equity will be monitored and reported through

• Annual gender pay gap reports
• Updates on the Gender Equity Strategy and Plan
• Ongoing analysis or workforce, pay and promotion data
• Continued engagement with staff communities and networks.

We are committed to transparency and to building a fair and inclusive workplace that reflects the rich diversity of Aotearoa.  

Staff networks play a vital role in fostering a more inclusive and supportive work environment. They provide opportunities for staff to connect, support one another, and contribute to the organisation’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. DEI network details are on the staff intranet.

If you’re interested in developing your own understanding of building an inclusive and equitable workplace for our diverse communities, explore these training opportunities:

• Working with Unconscious Bias
• Navigating our communities: inter-cultural capability

• Racism in academia (2024), by Professor Jemaima Tiatia-Siau. This book chapter is in the Handbook of Critical Whiteness, edited by J. Ravulo et al., and published by Springer Nature.
  
• The Authority Gap: Why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it (2022), by Mary Ann Sieghart.
• White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism (2019), by Robin Di Angelo.
• The End of Patriarchy: Radical feminism for men (2017), by Robert Jensen.
• Everyday Bias: Identifying and navigating unconscious judgements in our daily lives (2020), by Howard Ross.

18 September 2026: Gender pay gap census date