NSW treasurer Matt Kean has announced a landmark review and expert panel that will examine how economic opportunities can be improved for women in the state.
The review will focus on how best to support women to enter, re-enter and stay in the workforce, how to improve salary and superannuation outcomes, and how it can best improve access to and affordability of childcare.
The review will be supported by an “expert reference panel”, which will be chaired by Sam Mostyn AO, President of Chief Executive Women.
Other members of the panel include: CEO of the Muslim Women Association Maha Abdo OAM, partner at EY Port Jackson Partners Blair Comley, CEO of The Infrastructure Collaborative and The Exchange Jillian Kilby, Co-Chair of the Council on Early Childhood Development Leslie Loble, and writer and teacher Daisy Turnbull.
Matt Kean said an intergenerational report found the economy would be 8 per cent larger by 2060 if women’s participation in the workforce reached parity with men.
“Women are underrepresented in our trades, our offices and our boardrooms, and for the State to be more productive we need everyone who wants to work to be able to do so,” he said in a statement.
“I want to make sure a girl born today has the same opportunities as a boy born in the hospital room next door, which has not been the case for their mothers and grandmothers before them.”
NSW Premier Domonic Perrottet said it was “time to level the playing field for women”.
“We know there is more work to do to improve conditions for more women to succeed in the workplace and have greater choice in their lives. This Review will help find ways to increase women’s leadership opportunities and enable flexibility for working parents.”
Bronnie Taylor, NSW Minister for Women, said: “Too often women leave the workforce or reduce their working hours out of necessity, not choice. It is therefore no surprise that women have only two thirds of the superannuation saved compared to men.”
“If we increase the number of women in the workforce we will improve their economic security and wellbeing across a lifetime, bringing enormous social and economic benefits to everyone in NSW.”