The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has published the gender pay gap results for all Australian businesses with over 100 employees for 2023-24, including North Melbourne.

The WGEA gender pay gap (GPG) metric is defined as the difference between the earnings for men and women, expressed as a percentage (%) of men’s earnings.

North Melbourne is committed to strengthening gender equality in our workplace, at our games and in our community, and we recognise that improving our gender pay gap is part of this. 

In 2023-24, the club’s average gender pay gap was 29.3%, a decrease of 5.7% from the previous year. This gap is largely driven by the difference in salaries between our male and female players. 

Removing the AFL and AFLW players from the data, the club’s average gender pay gap is 23.9%, down from 25.6% in 2022-23.

This gap is primarily driven by fewer women in senior leadership roles and key football roles in coaching, football operations and high performance. These challenges are not unique to North Melbourne and are faced by the AFL industry as a whole.

In the same reporting period, 67% of the club’s appointments to management roles were women, and women made up 41% of our overall workforce at North Melbourne.   

Our goal is to see annual improvement in our gender pay gap over the next five years, and to do this we need to attract more talented females to our club and continue to grow and develop the female talent pipeline for senior leadership and football roles. We plan to achieve this by:

• Conducting yearly audits of our gender pay gap to address immediate concerns and ensure our gender pay gap is reducing year on year.
• Providing more development opportunities for women to access pathways to senior leadership and key football roles.
• Continuing to provide generous paid parental leave entitlements and creating a supportive culture that encourages both men and women to access our paid parental leave and flexible work benefits.

Our full gender pay gap statement can be viewed here.

North Melbourne CEO Jennifer Watt said that although it is pleasing to see some progress, the club knows it still has more work to do. 

“The club is committed to taking greater strides in building a future where women in sport are celebrated, supported, and rewarded in a way they deserve,” Watt said.

“We’re proud of the club’s history in celebrating diversity on and off the field at North Melbourne.

“We know some of the policies and initiatives that we have implemented in recent years to promote gender diversity and inclusivity are working.

“It’s in our DNA to be a leader in progressive thinking and action. But we can’t and we won’t stand still.”