As more women have joined the workforce, overall productivity has increased due to a rise in total working hours. This is the outcome of research into women, innovation and productivity by Dame Athene Donald DBE from the University of Cambridge. In her policy brief, published by the Bennet Institute for Public Policy, she asserts that the full potential of women’s contributions remains underutilised. Structural inequalities, biased workplace cultures, and underinvestment in women’s health and entrepreneurship hinder their innovation and impact. 

Professor Donald points out the evidence that a lack of diversity, and more specifically a lack of women, in different parts of the workplace can limit productivity and the economy. This is not just due to a lack of hours worked, but a lack of women’s insights, their imagination and their skills. The comparative absence of women in many of the technical arenas in which growth is expected – green energy and the energy transition, quantum computing and digital for instance – is striking, as is the lack of female-founder start-ups and scale-ups.

This brief discusses how unlocking the full economic potential of women requires tackling systemic barriers – from biased workplace cultures and underinvestment to gender gaps in education, leadership and funding – through inclusive policies, early education reform and diversity-focused business incentives.

The University of Sydney recently published their 2025 Gender Equality @ Work Index which tracks the state of gender equality in workplaces in Australia and across the world, with the goal of catalysing change. It offers a comprehensive, national and longitudinal snapshot of gender equality at work. Assessing the gender gap across seven key dimensions, it tracks the current state of gender equality at work and measures changes over time. 

The report finds that, despite decades of effort by government, employers, unions and education institutions, gender inequalities are an intractable feature of the Australian labour market. Stubborn gaps in participation, pay and career progression are holding women, business, and the national economy back. The 7 domains are:

• 1.    Participation: women participate in the workforce at lower rates than men
• 2.    Pay: hourly pay is close to equality while total remuneration shows a large gender gap
• 3.    Hours: women carry the domestic work and parental leave load and work fewer hours
• 4.    Stratification: Women are working below their skill level and are less likely to be in the top job
• 5.    Segmentation: men and women are concentrated in different industries and occupations
• 6.    Security: women are more likely to work in insecure casual roles
• 7.    Safety: women are more likely to experience sexual harassment.