“Some occupations may not see any change at all in their gender pay gap in the coming years,” she said.

Many listed companies have set targets, such as the number of women on their boards, as a way to reduce the pay gap. Other companies deliberately audit pay rates across their operations to detect any differences around gender.

The businesses most consistent with gender equity policies closed the pay gap for their managerial staff by 4.4 percentage points between 2015 and 2020 while the gap for their non-managers fell by 2.3 percentage points.

But for the least consistent businesses firms, the gap for managers closed by just 1.4 percentage points while it actually increased for non-managerial staff by 0.03 percentage points.

If a business stopped gender pay gap audits from 2017, the gap widened by 5.1 percentage points.

The industries most likely to follow gender equity policies such as targets and pay audits are the finance sector, utilities, mining and real estate. The least likely are healthcare, hospitality and retail.

Sarah Caruana is the group director of the buildings and places team covering Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania for infrastructure consulting company AECOM and oversees almost 250 staff.

She recently took part in a company program in which executives sponsor female staff members with the aim to give them experience in managerial areas while developing their career trajectories.

Ms Caruana, who has sat on remuneration committees for the company, said it was clear women took a different approach in job interviews when the question of pay came up.

“Not all women, but a lot of women, don’t see their accomplishments and don’t talk themselves up. They’re frightened they are going to sound like they are big noting themselves. That doesn’t really happen in male interviews,” she said.

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“Lots of people ask for a ridiculous amount of money, but typically women struggle to know their real worth. I’ve interrupted interviews to say you’re not telling us what you’re really worth.”

Ms Caruana said it was already difficult to set a pay rate for workers.

“Setting a person’s pay is a grey area. A lot of it is based on skill sets and experience and expertise,” she said.

“I say to my team members that if they want to talk about their pay, then I’ll sit down and go through everything with them.”

WGEA director Libby Lyons said the report showed how important it was for businesses to remain focused on dealing with gender issues and pay gaps.

“The findings of last year’s WGEA dataset showed that progress on gender equality that stalled in Australian workplaces. This report reveals a worrying level of apathy and indifference among many Australian employers towards improving gender equality outcomes in their organisations,” she said.