The Gold Coast Football Club is committed to promoting equality, valuing diversity, and ensuring fairness for all. The Club recognise that achieving gender equality in the workplace involves striving for equitable opportunities and outcomes for people of all genders, rather than insisting on uniformity. Our commitment lies in realising a future where individuals can access and thrive in equal measure, regardless of gender, enjoying fair rewards, resources, and opportunities.
The Gender Pay Gap is a universally recognised metric of workplace gender equality. Based on the Gold Coast Football Club’s recent submission to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, our Gender Pay Gap results over the past two reporting periods can be seen below.
|
All employees |
2021 - 2022 |
2022-2023 |
|
Median total remuneration |
36.5% |
14.2% |
|
Median base salary |
36.5% |
14.2% |
The Gold Coast Football Club has seen a decrease in its GPG figure year on year. Upon further analysis, this is predominantly driven by the progressive thinking and action of the AFL to continue to close the pay gap between Male and Female athletes. With industry wide salary cap restrictions for the AFLW competition, pay equity is a challenge, however, in early 2022 we saw the AFLW salary cap double. In 2023, the AFLW player salary cap increased again by 30% and the Collective Bargaining agreement became a joint agreement equalising employment conditions for both male and female athletes. In another positive move towards gender equality, the AFL industry has engaged our female athletes in 12-month contracts.
Captured below is the Club’s Gender Composition by pay quartile. Although there is a balanced gender composition across our total workforce, the disproportionate concentration of men in the upper quartiles and women in the lower quartiles is driving a positive gender pay gap result. We acknowledge that our Club has a high proportion of males within our men’s football program and positions such as coaches, high performance staff and recruiters are predominantly male and attract higher salaries due to the technical expertise required. With more females playing and coaching AFL at junior level, we expect to see a shift in the expertise and skill of female candidates applying for these positions in the future. The Club is proud of the progression made in appointing females to key operational positions within the football department such as Head of Women’s Football, Academy Manager and Football Operations Manager. The Club will continue to strive to create opportunities for females at this level across all programs.
The Gold Coast Football Club will continue to focus on future improvements and monitoring to ensure we continue to close our gender pay gap and achieve gender equality.
- Uphold our support for the AFL’s efforts to promote pay equity and enhance employment conditions for female and male athletes alike.
- Create and expand opportunities for female coaches within our community and Academy programs and continue investing in their professional growth.
- Evaluate our strategies for attracting women to roles within our football program to foster greater inclusivity.
- Persist in benchmarking against external data and conducting thorough, like-for-like pay analyses during the Club's annual salary review process.
- Review our current paid parental leave policy to attract and retain women in higher-level roles and leadership positions.
- Assess and refine our return-to-work policy and systems to ensure that primary caregivers, regardless of gender, are not unfairly disadvantaged.
- Continue to review our Diversity & Inclusion Framework to include Gender Pay Gap policies and Gender Equality aspirations.
