00:00 I think it actually could be a game changer if superannuation funds take it seriously.
00:06 So superannuation funds actually have trillions of dollars under investment in Australia and
00:11 globally so they're really significant market players in the whole investment landscape.
00:17 So if they're starting to make decisions about performance on gender pay gap but also some
00:21 of the drivers of gender pay gap, that could really make a change and it could really push
00:26 some behaviour of some of the companies that they're choosing to invest in, not invest
00:30 in or that they're managing.
00:31 So I think it could be quite significant.
00:33 And so these figures have been released in some other countries around the world in previous
00:38 years and is there evidence that it has had quite a noted effect?
00:43 Yeah I've got to say we don't have fabulous figures globally that would drive gender lens
00:48 investing but it certainly is a real innovation in the market and institutional investors
00:53 are really seeking out really good data to be able to drive their decisions.
00:58 Where big institutional investors have tried to intervene in practices in organisations
01:06 that they're seeking to invest in or that they manage, we can see change around things
01:10 such as women on boards, the existence of different policies in organisations, things
01:16 like access to leave, like paid parental leave and a range of other indicators like the gender
01:20 pay gap for example.
01:21 So we need more data.
01:23 I think this release of this company level data is very good.
01:28 We probably need some more data to get some really finely grained insight into what's
01:32 going on in companies.
01:33 But yeah it can drive some very significant changes.
01:36 Yeah, considering the sheer amount of money that these funds have, what's the potential
01:40 for it to have an impact?
01:42 Well it depends on how seriously the funds take this strategy along.
01:47 It is an innovative strategy at the moment but a lot of the particularly industry superfunds
01:51 are really quite interested in seeing the extent to which the companies they're investing
01:55 in align with their strategy.
01:57 Many of the superfunds are quite interested in issues that reflect the working lives of
02:01 their members.
02:02 If you have a highly feminised labour force, say for example you have a health sector for
02:07 example where the majority of people who pay into a fund might be women, it sort of doesn't
02:12 make sense that that fund would then invest in areas where in companies that don't reflect
02:18 the interests and the needs of workers who might be paying into those funds.
02:23 Is there evidence that the Australian funds have had an effect in other areas like in
02:26 environment?
02:27 Yeah, so we talk about ESG and the E is environment and the S is social.
02:33 We certainly have seen more movement around the environmental sort of data and so companies
02:37 look at, investors look at things like carbon footprint, whether there are issues around
02:43 community engagement or disasters when they're thinking about whether they invest to look
02:48 at both what the capacity of the organisation is but also to look at risk.
02:53 So I think that has seen some change and we've seen some real demands from institutional
02:57 investors around some of those things.
02:59 If that moves to be as mainstream in the S part and the gender part of the social part
03:05 of ESG, I think it could have similar impacts, yes.
03:09 What did you think of the results of this survey when it was released, I think it was
03:12 just in the last couple of weeks, for the first time on individual companies showing
03:16 the gender pay gap?
03:17 Because it was just the one percentage number for each company?
03:22 Okay, so companies have always reported their data to the agency, the public sector agency
03:28 that collects the data but we've never as the public been able to see how does this
03:32 organisation fit in their market and look at a finely grained level of what they report
03:38 is both the base level of pay and the gap there but also the total pay so that will
03:43 include things like bonus.
03:45 So some of the results were kind of shocking but in line with what we know from ABS data
03:51 and previous workplace gender equality agency data.
03:54 Really worthwhile?
03:55 Absolutely worthwhile and I'm a great believer that sunlight is a great cleanser and if we're
03:59 collecting this data why wouldn't we use it, I guess an academic would say that but
04:03 if we're collecting data why not use it to drive decision making and have some precise
04:07 action that could actually address some of the challenges that we're facing.
04:09 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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