Pay parity and domestic workloads key barriers to gender equality, research shows

Aussie women have greater participation, pay, and job security than ever before; however, the pay gap and domestic responsibilities are holding back work-based gender equality, a new report has revealed.

For its research, the Gender Equality @ Work Index, the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion @ Work (the centre), revealed gender equality trends at work, over a 10-year period.

The centre’s index was launched in Canberra by Assistant Minister for Women, the Honourable Rebecca White, on Monday (3 November). White said that the centre’s research highlights the drivers and barriers to gender equality in the workplace.

“It’s encouraging to see progress achieved, but we know more needs to be done to make equality a reality,” she said.

7 dimensions of equality

The centre’s findings showed that overall, gender equality improved by only three points between 2014 and 2024, from 80 to 83. The index is based on seven dimensions: participation, pay, hours, security, segmentation, stratification, and safety – where a score of 100 in each of these dimensions represents male-female equality – serving as a tool to identify areas of stagnation, and where additional action and investment are needed for progress on gender equality.

White commended the federal government for making economic equality for women a central priority, improving the Commonwealth paid parental leave, and pushing for improved pay in female-dominated workforces. Women were closest to parity in security (94), participation (92), and pay (92), its findings revealed, while the greatest progress to parity was in stratification, up from 77 to 86 between 2014 and 2024.

The gaps

According to its data, Australia performed worst in gender segmentation of work, up by only three points in the past 10 years: to 67. The centre’s director, Professor Rae Cooper AO, noted that although women are better educated – with a higher rate of bachelor-level education than men – women work less and get paid less, at lower levels, and in jobs and industries that are less secure and safe than those of men.

Additionally, the centre found that safety has dropped in the past decade. Its findings revealed that women experienced significantly higher levels of sexual harassment and psychological injury in the workplace compared to men. Cooper noted that men and women concentrated on different kinds of work, finding that male-dominated roles provided higher pay and were of “higher quality”. She stressed that “the more dominated an occupation is by one gender, the more likely it is to face workforce gaps”, as this divide reinforces inequality and also causes chronic skills shortages.

Progress

The centre’s deputy director, Professor Elizabeth Hill, said the split between domestic responsibilities at home remains an additional barrier to gender equality at work. Encouragingly, Hill noted a shift in this split, with men taking on more unpaid weekly domestic work and a decrease for women. Despite this improvement, she said that a major cause of gender inequality at home and in the workplace is the low uptake of paid parental leave by men.

“We need men to take the leave made available to them and enable women to return to work sooner and in greater capacity,” she said.

Cooper noted that progress is happening in most areas, particularly with more women in senior roles. She added that the progress revealed in the index shows that gender equality in the workplace is an achievable goal. Policymakers, employers and the community must take action to tackle the root causes of inequality, for change to happen and to finally close the gap – a $128 billion productivity burden on the nation’s economy, she said.