Gender Equity:
Definition & Comparison

Gender equity in the workplace is a process that recognizes and addresses structural and societal barriers preventing individuals from achieving their full potential based on gender, allocating resources and opportunities based on the specific needs of each person to reach equal outcomes. Unlike gender equality, which provides all genders with the same resources and opportunities, gender equity acknowledges that people start from different positions due to systemic disadvantages and requires tailored support to level the playing field.

Gender equity takes into account how gender intersects with other identities such as race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and disabilities. It recognizes that women, Trans people, and non-binary individuals face different barriers in the workplace, and achieving equity requires distributing resources based on the varying circumstances and needs of each individual.

Related terms: gender equality, workplace diversity, inclusive culture, pay equity

Workplace gender equity matters because it is directly linked to organizational performance and economic growth. A growing body of research demonstrates that commitment to gender equity produces concrete financial benefits and improved organizational health.

Companies with the greatest proportion of women on executive committees earned a 47 percent higher rate of return on equity than companies with no women executives. Companies in the top 25 percent for gender diversity are 27 percent more likely to outperform their national industry average in terms of profitability. Organizations that actively create processes incorporating a variety of perspectives, experiences, and leadership styles consistently outperform competitors with homogenous leadership teams.

Gender equity also creates safer, healthier, and happier communities. When health systems provide equal access to healthcare for all genders, studies show better health outcomes including reduced depression and PTSD, reduced mortality rates, better self-rated health, and reduced alcohol consumption. Gender equality in education benefits every child, with girls who receive secondary education experiencing dramatically increased lifetime earnings, which contributes to stronger economies that benefit all genders.

Emerging women leaders continue to face obstacles hindering gender equity and upward mobility, primarily at the first and second rungs of the corporate ladder. In 2024, for every 100 men promoted, 81 women were also promoted, creating a profound gap in the talent pipeline.

Women remain less likely than men to be hired into entry-level roles, leaving them underrepresented from the start. This "broken rung" in the corporate ladder means men significantly outnumber women at the manager level, making it incredibly difficult for companies to support sustained progress at more senior levels. Men hold 66 percent of management positions, compared to 34 percent for women.

Specific barriers include:

• Unconscious bias and discrimination (intentional or unintentional)
• Fewer opportunities to showcase leadership skills
• Lack of support and advocacy by immediate supervisors
• Less opportunity to network up the management chain
• Failure to recognize the benefits of diverse leadership and communication strategies
• Lack of advice on career advancement
• Ongoing assumptions about willingness to remain in the workforce long-term
• Failure to make diversity and gender parity a true priority at all levels of management

Women continue to receive lower pay, with women earning 84% of what men earned for the same job in 2020, and Black and Latina women earning even less. Women are over-represented in lower-paying sectors such as hospitality or food services industries, further exacerbating inequalities. Only 86 women get promoted for every 100 men that get promoted to management, and 62% of executive management positions are held by men, 20% are white women, and only 4% are women of color.

Gender equity and gender equality represent different approaches to achieving fairness in the workplace. Equality means each individual or group receives the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person's circumstances vary and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

Equality has to do with giving everyone the exact same resources. Equity involves distributing resources based on the needs of the recipients. While equality provides all genders with the same resources, equity acknowledges that people start from different positions due to systemic disadvantages and requires tailored support to level the playing field.

A practical example illustrates this difference: giving everyone a shoe represents equality, but giving everyone a shoe that fits them represents equity. In the workplace, if a boss gives everyone the same size work boots, not everyone will be able to fit into them. Although the boss thinks it's fair since everyone received a pair, equity would require providing boots in sizes that fit each individual employee.

Social systems are not naturally inequitable; they are purposely designed to reward specific demographics. Although gender equality provides a baseline that all organizations must work towards, offering all genders the same resources and opportunities often fails to bridge systemic gaps that have historically led some groups to be disproportionately held back.

The gender pay gap is the difference in earnings between men and women for the same work or work of equal value. In 2020, women earned 84% of what men earned for the same job, and Black and Latina women earned even less. This gender pay gap has persisted over the past years, shrinking by just 8 cents in 25 years.

The current gender pay gap in Australia is 21.1%. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2023 the gender pay gap has maintained itself with women making only 82% of what men make for nearly twenty years in the United States. Multiple factors contribute to gender pay inequities, including traditional social norms that keep women from choosing higher-paying roles and male-dominated industries, gender stereotyping, unequal access to education, and discrimination.

Women face challenges when negotiating pay. A Harvard study found that women grapple with a fear of negotiating pay and being penalized if they do. Another recent study found that women ask for raises just as often as men but are only given an increase 15% of the time, compared to 20% awarded to men.

In Australia, 22% of CEO positions are held by women. Women are playing an increasingly visible role in executive leadership, with the number of women leaders in the C-suite increasing from 17 percent to 29 percent in the last nine years, according to McKinsey & Company's Women in the Workplace 2024 study.

Despite these gains, a large gap between the number of men and women in leadership roles continues to persist. Only 86 women get promoted for every 100 men that get promoted to management. At the executive level, 62% of executive management positions are men, 20% are white women, and a tiny 4% are women of color.

Employers can achieve gender equity through strategic actions across multiple areas. Successfully addressing the talent gap at the corporate level requires a thoughtful and strategic approach across all levels of management, from the executive down to the middle manager, focused on ensuring an equal playing field.

Employers should take the following steps:

1. Commit to conducting regular pay audits. Analyzing compensation by gender (as well as by race) allows companies to identify inequities and take steps to correct them.
2. Abandon the practice of using salary history to set wages. This perpetuates the gender pay gap because it assumes that prior salaries were fairly established. Employers should instead use market research to determine what a particular position is worth to the organization.
3. Adopt practices and policies to encourage salary transparency. Job descriptions should include salary bands for each position and role within an organization. Pay secrecy policies should be abandoned because they make it difficult for workers to remedy wage disparities.
4. Commit to a culture of fairness and equity and build that into core values. Employers need to review their hiring and promotion practices to ensure women have equal opportunity and offer necessary resources, training and mentorship programs to help them succeed.
5. Ensure workplace flexibility so that women and men can better balance the demands of their home life with their jobs. Good parental leave policies as well as leave for other types of family caregiving are essential to enabling everyone to succeed and advance in their careers.
6. Conduct a gender equity audit. Understanding the different identities that exist within the workforce, including intersectional identities, allows comparison of different employees' experiences to uncover truths and understand areas requiring improvement.
7. Establish clear goals and metrics for gender equity, such as the percentage of women, Trans people, and Non-binary people in leadership positions or the gender pay gap. These goals should be communicated to all employees, and progress should be regularly tracked and reported.
8. Create a diverse and inclusive culture by actively recruiting and promoting diverse groups, creating a safe and respectful workplace, and providing equal opportunities for all employees.
9. Offer flexible work arrangements such as remote or hybrid working and flexible scheduling to accommodate the needs of all employees, particularly working parents.
10. Provide training and development opportunities for women, Trans people, and non-binary people to help them advance in their careers and overcome barriers to advancement. This includes leadership training, mentorship programs, and networking opportunities.
11. Train employees to identify and reduce their biases through unconscious bias training programs.
12. Implement clear and structured criteria for hiring and evaluations to reduce subjective decision-making.
13. Encourage women to negotiate their salaries and provide support for doing so.
14. Maintain transparent wage records so employees can understand compensation structures.
15. Create career development programs that cultivate and advance employees' skills.
16. Connect junior employees with senior employees through mentorship programs while offering training and support for mentors.
17. Encourage men to mentor and sponsor women to increase opportunities for women's advancement.

The broken rung in the corporate ladder refers to the barrier women face at the first level of management that prevents them from advancing to higher leadership positions. Women remain less likely than men to be hired into entry-level roles, leaving them underrepresented from the start. In 2024, for every 100 men promoted, 81 women were also promoted.

Because of this broken rung, men significantly outnumber women at the manager level, making it incredibly difficult for companies to support sustained progress at more senior levels. The long-term result is a profound gap in the talent pipeline. Obstacles to early promotion into management create a long-term talent gap, hindering women's ability to climb the corporate ladder into senior leadership roles.

Unconscious bias plays a significant role in perpetuating gender inequity in the workplace. Everyone can have unconscious biases and prejudices about people or groups, which influence hiring, promotion, and evaluation decisions without individuals being aware of their impact.

To address unconscious bias, employers should train employees to identify and reduce their biases. This includes hosting viewings of educational films, taking implicit bias tests, implementing structured training programs, and watching bias management videos. Google, for example, has worked to have each of its over 60,000 employees participate in a 60- to 90-minute unconscious bias training that identifies the negative consequences of unconscious biases and provides mechanisms to identify when perception of a person is clouded by biases.

Implementing clear and structured criteria for hiring and evaluations helps reduce the impact of unconscious bias by making decisions more objective and transparent. Enforcing accountability and transparency in decision-making processes also helps organizations address bias systematically.

Gender equity is often compared to 3 related concepts:

Gender Equity vs. Gender Equality

Gender Equity vs. Workplace Diversity

Gender Equity vs. Pay Equity