BCEC’s Gender Equity Insights 2024 focuses on the changing nature of part-time work in Australia. These annual Equity Insight Reports, produced with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, can be accessed on the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre website.  They call for action to prioritise gender equity across all job levels, not just management.

The report identifies an important shift in how employees choose to engage in the workforce, as they increasingly seek flexibility and opportunities to tailor work schedules and locations to their needs, and calls on employers to develop a plan for action that normalises both flexible and part-time work, without career penalties.

The research found that part-time roles dropped by 3.2% in the past 2 years, and the subsequent rise in flexible full-time and hybrid roles has enabled more employee choice. Full-time roles that incorporate flexible work arrangements, such as remote and hybrid work options, are becoming more prevalent in Australian workplaces, having risen to 42.5% over this same period. The report also highlights an increase in full time working managers being able to access flexible start and end times, now at 65% of full-time managers.

Women aged 35 to 55 have led the charge for the increase in those working full time, with the majority in this cohort choosing to do so as a personal preference rather than a financial necessity.  Angela Priestly in Women's Agenda questions whether some women are accessing the flexibility they need via full-time positions and earning more in the process.

WGEA Director Mary Wooldridge calls on employers to further “challenge certain patterns of work and re-design and re-imagine work as part time and flexible in a way that delivers maximum benefit to their employees and the productivity and profitability of their organisation.”  She also notes that employers who conduct a gender pay gap analysis, set targets and implement formal policies or strategies for flexible work have higher rates of women managers working part time. WGEA stated the findings present employers with a clear challenge to actively consider what more they can do to support part-time employees as well as those who need to, or choose to, work flexibly.

The Productivity Commission Inquiry report examines the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector, including: centre-based day care; preschools; family day care; outside school hours care; and in home care.

This report outlines what a universal ECEC system would look like, and the significant reforms necessary to achieve it. These reforms tackle issues that affect ECEC availability, inclusion, affordability, quality and equity. The report's recommendations aim to remove barriers to ECEC access such as the activity test, and support better outcomes for children and families including fully subsidised childcare for families earning under A$80,000 from 2026 and 3 days a week of high-quality early education and care for all families with children under 5.

Dr Melissa Tham from the Mitchell Institute summarises the report and offers an analysis in The Conversation.

Advocacy group The Parenthood has released a report spotlighting the negative impacts of inaccessible early learning on regional, rural and remote communities.  The report shares the stories of 160 parents, carers, educators and community leaders who are bearing the brunt of early learning and care shortages in those communities.

The Parenthood found 86% of families from regional, rural and remote communities struggling to access early learning services face financial stress. They report the Jobs and Skills early childhood Census revealed it would take around 21,000 early childhood education workers to meet the current demand in the industry, and the ramifications of this nation-wide shortage hits even harder and regional, rural and remote communities.

National cabinet has agreed to a $4.7 billion plan to ramp up frontline supports for people escaping family violence. The plan builds on almost $1 billion committed in the federal budget to the Leaving Violence program, which offers victim-survivors support packages of up to $5,000 to help leave a dangerous relationship. Chair of Community Legal Centres Australia Arlia Fleming said services could not afford to wait until July next year when the funding will kick in.

The statement also included a promise to establish national standards for men’s behaviour change, and an audit of key Commonwealth government systems to identify areas where they are being weaponised by perpetrators. First Ministers agreed to:

Develop new national best practice family and domestic violence risk assessment principles and a model best practice risk assessment framework.

Support enhancements to the National Criminal Intelligence System, which enables information sharing across jurisdictions, to provide a ‘warning flag’ that will assist police responding to high-risk perpetrators.

Extend and increase nationally-consistent, two-way information sharing between the family law courts and state and territory courts, child protection, policing and firearms agencies.

Strengthen system responses to high-risk perpetrators to prevent homicides, by trialling new focussed deterrence models and Domestic Violence Threat Assessment Centres. These centres will be able to use intelligence, monitor individuals and intervene with those at high risk of carrying out homicide.

BPW Australia Immediate Past President Jacqueline Graham and BPW Northern Territory State Representative Mary Linnel have been published in the latest edition of Trading Places, a yearly publication advocating for women in skilled trades.

With support and guidance from Tradeswomen Australia, Supporting and Linking Tradeswomen Australia (SALT), the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), and The Lady Tradies, Trading Places provides essential, myth-busting information that will aid the advancement of women in trades, and inspire people and businesses to embrace gender diversity.

You will find Jacqueline’s article on pp 20-21 and Mary’s on pp 58-60.

Women on Boards explores whether the gender pay gap driven by discrimination or personal choice. Professor Claudia Goldin, the 2023 Nobel Prize Winner in Economic Sciences, who was awarded for ‘for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”, says it’s not personal choice or women's preferences. She identified an unhealthy phenomenon of “greedy work” in which employers demand excessive hours and 24/7 availability in modern work culture, which creates a gender divide by penalising those workers – predominantly women – whose caregiving role collides with excessive employer expectations.

CEO of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency that determines the date of Equal Pay Day , Mary Wooldridge has said organisations must “reimagine” what senior leaders and managers look like if we are to make progress on closing the gender pay gap. WGEA published the gender pay gaps of more than 5000 firms and the findings showed there is a median gender pay gap in every single industry in Australia. 

Madeline Hislop writes in Women's Agenda that we need true buy-in form men to reach workplace equality.  She reports men are more likely to hold the CEO role in almost every industry in Australia. Meanwhile, just 22% of CEOs and 42% of managers in Australia are women.  At home, women continue to bear the lion’s share of domestic labour and caring responsibilities, and are far more likely to engage in paid work in a part-time capacity and in lower-paid industries. Female entrepreneurs are much less likely to secure VC funding and are more likely to face discrimination. 

Lacey Filipich writes that the gender pay gap is only part of the story.  The Gender Available Savings Penalty gap is actually 96%. The baseline should be taken from basic cost of living, not $0.  We all have the same basic expenses, but women have less left after these are covered than men do so it’s harder for women to save and get ahead. Hence the lower home ownership and superannuation.  Makes sense.

Executive Director of Women on Boards Claire Braund asks, given the Commonwealth public sector's gender pay gap is  narrower than private sector, is a government job still a ‘good option for women’?

Government employment has often been touted as a 'good option for women', providing the best and most secure employment conditions and reducing the likelihood of gender discrimination. This long held belief is being tested by the recent release of scorecard data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) which shows the Commonwealth Public Sector has a gender pay gap of 13.5% and in only 64% of employers undertook a gender pay gap analysis. This means women earn 86 cents for every dollar earned by men and this adds up to women earning $19,007 less than men per year. Of the employers who undertook a gender pay gap analysis, only 64% took action on the findings and just 9% of those created an Action Plan. 

The Commonwealth Public Sector Gender Scorecard for 2022 was released last week by the WGEA and features the results from WGEA’s employer Census of all public sector employers with 100 or more employees. Key statistics include:

• 339,951 employees were included in the census
• 43.5% are women and 56.3% are men. 
• men are 2.5 times likely to be in the highest earning quartile than women
• 50% of employer gender pay gaps are above 6.9%.
• 11% of universal parental leave is taken by men
• 55% of employers have a gender-balanced board

There are different ways to measure Australia’s gender pay gap – different government agencies calculate pay gaps based on different data, producing varying results. It’s no wonder we’re confused!

Future Women explains that the Australian Bureau of Statistics relies on weekly earnings data collected every 6 months, while the Workplace Gender Equality Agency collects data from Australian companies with at least 100 employees including base salary plus discretionary payments like bonuses, overtime and superannuation. 

Our equalpayday.com website uses the ABS 13% from which the date for Equal Pay Day is calculated.  Women this will work 50 additional days into the new financial year to earn the same, on average, as men did last financial year.

However you measure it, the gender pay gap favours men across all national figures, industries, occupations, and age groups.

Pay transparency is critical too – federal legislation passed last year means private sector companies with more than 100 employees will have their pay rates published in February 2025.  This will reveal the extent to which male and female colleagues in equivalent jobs are paid differently.

The Australian government has submitted its required 5 year report on progress towards gender equality to ECOSOC via the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.  All nations produce a Report on the Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and these will be compiled and submitted to ECOSOC and the Commission on the Status of Women in 2025.

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which was adopted by 189 countries at the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1985, with the aim to advance gender equality worldwide. Minister for Women, Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher, said Australia’s report highlights the achievements in gender equality and identifies some of the challenges that remain. 

BPW Australia clubs are encouraged to review the government’s report which covers a wide range of women's issues.  The early sections on Australia’s Gender Equality Achievements and Priorities and  Australia’s Challenges and Setbacks provide an overview.

According to the United Nations SDG report, with just 6 years remaining, current progress falls far short of what is required to meet the SDGs. Without massive investment and scaled up action, the achievement of the SDGs — the blueprint for a more resilient and prosperous world and the roadmap out of current global crises — will remain elusive. The lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating conflicts, geopolitical tensions and growing climate chaos have severely hindered progress.

Under SDG5 gender equality, it reports a lag in progress. Harmful practices are decreasing but not at a rate keeping up with population growth: 1 in 5 girls still marry before 18; 230 million girls and women have been subjected to female genital mutilation; and violence against women persists, disproportionately affecting those with disabilities. Parity in women’s participation in public life remains elusive, and parity in management positions will require another 176 years. Women carry an unfair burden of unpaid domestic and care work, spending 2.5 times more hours a day on it than men.

The report details the urgent priorities and areas needed for stronger and more effective action to ensure the 2030 promise to end poverty, protect the planet and leave no one behind.  It showcases where tangible progress has been made and highlights where action must accelerate, particularly in critical areas undermining SDG progress - climate change, peace and security, and inequalities among and between countries.

The Global Gender Gap Index has annually benchmarked gender parity across 4 key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment since 2006, tracking the progress of numerous economies’ efforts towards closing these gaps over time.

This year, of the Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks gender parity across 146 economies. It examines in detail a subset of 101 countries that have been included in every edition of the index since 2006, including Australia. Cross-country comparisons support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender gaps.

Search for Australia to find our rankings under a range of headings, and on p93 note the criteria where Australia is ranked 1^st globally.

Australia ranks 24^th overall [New Zealand ranks 4^th]

Economic Participation and Opportunity 42

Educational Attainment 84

Health and Survival 88

Political Empowerment 28

Most governments have yet to make gender a systematic feature and focus of their budgetary cycle. Since the 1984 launch of the first gender budget initiative in Australia, the uptake in efforts has extended to over 100 countries. The 2024 Global Gender Gap Index shows that, while no country has achieved full gender parity, 97% of the economies included in this edition have closed more than 60% of their gap, compared to 85% in 2006.