This report card shows the challenges women and girls in Australia face through youth and young adulthood, in careers and working life, through parenthood and families, and in later life. It looks at education, economic outcomes, health, safety and wellbeing, housing and gender norms.

The authors of this report argue that Australia continues to lag behind other developed countries, in terms of the labour force participation of women, with policy settings around paid parental leave and child care undermining progress.

This policy brief draws on research to develop a more robust evidence base to guide progress towards unlocking the economic potential of migrant and refugee women.

This report brings together information from a variety of sources specifically on the economic participation of migrant and refugee women. The research includes a review of the academic literature, as well as analyses of major data sources.

This report presents the findings of a pilot study on women’s experiences of pregnancy discrimination in Victoria arising from a collaboration between the authors and JobWatch.

The Jobs and Skills Summit brought Australians together to work constructively on the challenges and opportunities facing the Australian labour market and economy. A major objective emerging from the summit was the promotion of full employment and growing productivity for the benefit of all Australians.

This report seeks to analyse and identify the population cohorts that have been excluded from the Australian labour market, finding that equal opportunities and gender equality must be achieved to unlock a cohort of older female workers currently excluded from the workforce.

This publication presents fact-based information to raise awareness of the status of Western Australian women. It contributes to the evidence base which underpins actions to address the barriers to women’s progress and promote the benefits of greater gender equity.

This plan features actions to improve employment pathways for women who are marginalised at work, particularly Maori and Pacific women, young and older women, disabled women, women who are former refugees and recent migrants, and women in the LGBTQIA+ community.

The analysis undertaken for this report suggests that Australia can address our economy's current and future skill needs by closing the gap between the number employed and hours worked of men and women across our economy.

This report outlines actions that schools, government and industry can take to encourage girls to participate equally in engineering, maths and science lessons and discussions, and also promote women as role models in engineering, maths and science.

This report calls for several, long-overdue changes to make workplaces and society safer for women, close the gender pay gap and ensure all working women have a secure retirement.

This article provides a brief overview of women’s participation in the Australian workforce, providing some key rates with age breakdowns, part-time employment rates, employment status and involvement in leadership roles.

This report presents the most up-to-date synthesis of international research efforts to track global inequalities. The data and analysis presented here are based on the work of more than 100 researchers over four years, located on all continents, contributing to the World Inequality Database, maintained...

This strategy is the culmination of a partnership between the Australian Public Service Commission and the federal Office for Women, in conjunction with extensive consultation across the APS, academia and the private sector.

This report examines how women in couple families with male partners and primary school-aged children managed work, family and remote schooling during long pandemic-related lockdowns. It draws on in-depth interviews with 14 women and the findings highlight how the triple load in lockdowns is taking...

A combination of greater levels of part-time work, employment in lower-paid industries, lower hourly rates of pay for women compared to men, and less time in the paid workforce during their working years results in pronounced gender pay, income and superannuation gaps. This paper looks...

This report is an analysis of initiatives to improve gender diversity in companies. It examines innovative policies to recruit and retain talent across genders.

This briefing paper illustrates how Australia’s recovery from the pandemic recession widened the gender pay gap, as women’s jobs returned on a more part-time and casualised basis than for men.

Many Australians – particularly women – suffered more than they needed to in the COVID recession because elements of the government response were inadequate or ill-directed. This report urges governments to inject more money into services sectors, childcare, and aged care, and to rewrite the...

The need to increase the level of skills and qualifications of the Australian workforce in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) features regularly in narratives of the future of work. In this paper, the authors propose a method for measuring the 'STEM-intensity'...

In this report, the McKell Institute advocates for a universal Child Care Subsidy, and evaluates the Working Family Child Care Boost announced by Federal Labor Leader, Anthony Albanese, in his budget reply speech of 8 October 2020.

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of people with STEM qualifications and how STEM qualifications are used in the Australian workforce.

Female labour force participation has increased tremendously since World War II in developed countries. The key contribution of this paper is to provide separate and internally consistent estimates of the role of tax and transfer policy reforms, wage growth, population changes and changes in labour...