JWS welcomes the second round of WGEA's public reporting of gender pay gap information for organisations with 100+ employees. The transparency generated through its first public reporting in 2024 was a positive step forward for Australia. JWS is pleased to see this continue.
Overall approach to gender equality
JWS is committed to gender equality. Gender remains a key priority for our Diversity & Inclusion Strategy.
We know that women in the legal industry can encounter barriers in the workplace. To address these issues, JWS continues to ensure appropriate support through our path to partnership program, flexible working options and mentoring and sponsorship.
Through these and other initiatives, such as our active Gender Equality Network (championed by longstanding female and male partners), we are pleased with the continued increase in the number of women in our partnership. Over the past five years, female partner representation has grown from 17 per cent in 2020 to 33 per cent in 2025. We know that more women in senior positions in our firm will help to reduce our gender pay gap.
Our gender pay gap
With our workforce now more than 460 people, JWS has supported our people growth through a range of measures to ensure gender pay equity. This includes:
- consistently assessing the roles across our firm and relevant salary bands;
- reviewing remuneration based on available data; and
- reviewing remuneration bands annually during our performance and remuneration review period.
We use both internal and external guidance to ensure this meets, or exceeds, industry standards.
The median total remuneration gender pay gap for our legal industry comparison group is 9.8 per cent. We are pleased to report that JWS has a median total remuneration gender pay gap of 8.1 per cent (1.7 per cent lower than our industry comparison group). This is an improvement from our 2022-2023 gap of 12.1 per cent.
The average total remuneration gender pay gap for our legal industry comparison is 19 per cent. In comparison, JWS has an average total remuneration gender pay gap of 15.1 per cent (3.9 per cent lower than our industry comparison group).
JWS has a median base salary gender pay gap of 8.1 per cent - a considerable improvement on our 2022 - 2023 gap of 11.9 per cent and our 2021-2022 gap of 18.7 per cent. It is also 4 per cent lower than our industry comparison group median base salary gender pay gap of 12.1 per cent. Despite this, we acknowledge that our gender pay gap in both categories needs to continue to reduce.
In relation to gender composition by pay quartile, we have 65 per cent females in the Upper Quartile. This is 5 per cent higher than our 2022-2023 result and 10 per cent higher than our industry comparison group. We believe this gender composition at the highest level of remuneration contributes to our improving gender pay gap. We will continue working on initiatives to increase the percentage of women in our Upper Quartile.
Drivers of our gender pay gap
We acknowledge that the largest contributors to the gender pay gap in the legal industry include (i) gender discrimination, (ii) care, family and workforce participation and (iii) type of job[1]. We consider that our gender pay gap continues to be influenced by the same factors affecting the legal industry, as a whole.
Strategies for continuing to reduce our gender pay gap
JWS’ strategies for continuing to reduce our gender pay gap remain the same as 2024 and can be reviewed here.
[1] Based on research from KPMG prepared with Diversity Council Australia and WGEA: ‘She’s Price(d)less: the economics of the gender pay gap’ dated 13 July 2022. The research found the largest contributors to the gender pay gap were (i) gender discrimination at 39 per cent in 2017 (ii) care, family and workforce participation at 33 per cent in 2017 and (iii) type of job at 24 per cent in 2017.