There’s been little change in the distribution of men and women across the majority of occupations over 15 years, despite efforts to get more women into male-dominated professions and men into female-dominated professions.
And men continue to outearn women in all but two per cent of the 688 occupations included in the latest report from Jobs and Skills Australia, the federal workforce planning agency.
This lack of progress is more than a gender equity issue. It’s a drag on productivity. The latest Jobs and Skills Australia (JSW) report reveals that pay equity is most likely to occur in gender-balanced occupations. But only one in five Australian workers are in such occupations.
Nearly 70 per cent of occupations are as gender-segregated as they were 15 years ago, according to the data.
This gender segregation feeds directly into the labour shortage issue.
As the report outlines, shortages across occupations intensify as gender segregation gets worse.
While the largest gender pay gaps continue to persist across male-dominated areas, like in finance and construction-related trades, some female-dominated areas have actually seen an increase in the gender pay gap.
Indeed, even in the female-dominated early childhood education workforce, men are typically paid 14 per cent more, according to the analysis by JSA of data from the Australian Taxation Office.
Only one in five workers in Australia work in gender-balanced occupations, and almost 70 per cent of occupations have the same level of gender segregation as 15 years ago.
Jobs and Skills Australia Deputy Commissioner Megan Lilly says, “gender occupational segregation is actually a handbrake on our economy.”
She believes this gender segregation exacerbates skill shortages, such as in an area like early childhood education that is screaming out for more workers. “Fix segregation and you fix occupational shortages and gender pay gaps.”
This new report is groundbreaking. Not just for the data, but because of what it connects.
It shows clear links between gender segregated workforces, gender pay gaps, and occupations with critical skill shortages.
It reveals just how little has changed in the 15 years since the latest data was collected.
And for the first time, it includes the collection of intersectional pay gap data, spotlighting the deeper inequities facing First Nations women.
First Nations women have the largest gender pay gap in Australia, earning an average of 35 per cent less than average Australian male workers. That is almost 10 percentage points higher than that of women generally.
As Professor Naureen Young, Director of the University of Technology Sydney’s Centre for Indigenous People and Work, said on the findings this morning, this pay gap is not just a productivity issue; it’s a ‘closing the gap’ issue. Having intersectional pay gap data is key for monitoring and measuring progress because “what gets measured gets done”.
Other intersectional insights from the report include worker patterns among culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) workers, with CALD women being a key aspect in supporting gender balancing of high-skilled professionals’ roles in health, tech and accounting.
Minister for Women Senator Katy Gallagher says most Australians would have experienced the frustration of worker shortages when seeking out services.
She says this gender segregation data explains why such shortages are continuing, and notes that care sector gaps are projected to worsen in the next ten years, along with many occupations in construction.
The eight most male-dominated occupations are all experiencing worker shortages, including truck drivers, electricians and carpenters.
“With evidence like this, addressing workforce segregation should be an economic priority for the Government and the parliament more broadly,” she wrote in Capital Brief this week.
Senator Gallagher also took the opportunity to again call out Liberal member for Longman Terry Young, who last week told Parliament that we should just “accept that men and women have vocations that the majority of each gender is drawn to”.
She says the Labor Government understands such attitudes aren’t just sexist, they’re “economically destructive”.
“When they [politicians like Young] tell young women they’re “naturally drawn” to nursing and hairdressing, they’re telling them women don’t belong or are not welcome on construction sites or in electrical trades. The same goes for young men and the care economy.
“And when politicians act like gender segregation is biological destiny rather than a policy choice, they guarantee our skills shortages will get worse, not better.”
The report is the first of three from JSA’s Gender Economic Equality Study, and comes with a clear call: If we want to solve labour shortages and lift national productivity, we need to stop treating gendered work as inevitable.