As the Jobs and Skills Summit continues, the latest Financy Women’s Index shows us that Australian women face a 59 year wait for gender equality in this country.
“Whilst Financy welcome’s the progressive discussion taking place at the Jobs and Skills Summit in respect to female employment, childcare and paid parental leave, it’s important to note that Australian women face a multi-generational wait for gender equality in this country and that’s because of the significant gap between the sexes in unpaid work,” said Financy Founder Bianca Hartge-Hazelman.
“Unpaid work is a huge barrier to women’s progress and achieving equality. It requires behavioural shifts in the home, schools and at work, as much as policy levers to change structural inequalities and the status quo for future generations,” said Ms Hartge-Hazelman.
The Financy Women’s Index (FWX) is the only quarterly snapshot of women’s economic progress and timeframes to gender equality in Australia. The FWX looks at gender equality across seven critical areas: education, employment, underemployment, wages, unpaid work, ASX 200 board gender diversity and superannuation.
The Financy Women’s Index June quarter report found that whilst it will take 59 years to achieve equality in unpaid work, it will take about half that time before equality is realised in employment.
The FWX Employment sub-index, which looks at the number of monthly hours worked by gender and population number, shows it will take 26 years, down from 26.3 years in March to achieve equality in employment.
The FWX Gender Pay Gap sub-index worsened in the June period to 23.4 years, up from 22.7 years after the underlying gender pay gap increased and threw the pace of annual progress once again off course.
The FWX Superannuation sub-index has an unchanged timeframe to equality at 19 years, which is an improvement on the revised 31 years as reported in December 2021.
The FWX Board Leadership sub-index shows it will take just 6.2 years, as of the June quarter, down from 6.4 years in March, to achieve equality in ASX 200 company boards based on the rate of annual growth over the past decade.
“We are closer to achieving gender equality in ASX 200 board leadership than we are for any other indicator of the FWX,” said Ms Hartge-Hazelman.
“But the pace of progress towards gender equality in leadership continues to slow and because of this, it is questionable if we will even achieve equality before 2030 in this one area.
The FWX Education sub-index, which will be updated in the upcoming September quarter, is the only area of women’s financial progress which has hardly changed in over 20 years.
Financy is a fearless believer in economic equality, which uses data insights to accelerate progress and support organisational efforts in diversity, equity & inclusion.
