The state of gender equity in Australia is shameful

In an excruciating bit of timing, the World Economic Forum on Wednesday released the latest annual report of its Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). The 2021 GGGI measures the gender-based gaps of 156 countries among four key dimensions – economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment – and tracks progress towards closing those gaps.

When the index commenced in 2006, Australia was ranked 15th. By 2013, we had dropped to 24th, a fall of nine places in seven years. In the eight years since, however, we have fallen another 26 places, to now rank 50th, putting us behind the vast majority of comparable OECD nations.

Australia has become a society where women are actively marginalised and held back.Credit: Andrew Dyson

Australia was the first country in the world to legislate a sex discrimination act, driven by the late Susan Ryan in the Hawke Government. At the same time, we pioneered gender responsive budgeting processes, and began publishing an annual women’s budget statement through the federal Office for Women.

Yet in the 15 years since the GGGI was launched, Australia’s commitment to achieving gender equality has been in retreat as the federal architecture that measured and promoted gender equality in Australia has been deliberately dismantled.

In 2006, the federal government stopped funding the Australian Bureau of Statistics to undertake the Time Use Survey, which measured the hours of paid and unpaid labour performed by men and women in Australia. In 2013, the women’s budget statement was abandoned by the Abbott Government, and the Office for Women was drastically downsized.

Where once Australia led the world in the development of policies and legislation to promote gender equality, we are now falling far behind, so that we are now one of few developed nations that does not actively set targets for gender equality and measure progress towards nationally agreed goals.

The late Susan Ryan led the campaign that produced the Equal Opportunity Act during the Hawke Government.

This failure of policy reflects government indifference to the fact that Australia is a society in which women are actively marginalised and held back. Perhaps the most telling statistical outcome from the 2021 GGGI is that Australia ranks equal first for educational attainment among women and girls, but 70th for economic participation and opportunity.

It’s not that Australian women aren’t trying their best – we are world-leaders in terms of our skills and abilities; it’s that we are not being given the opportunities to realise our full potential outside the home. In the workplace and in public life, we are at a significant and entrenched disadvantage compared to men, and that disadvantage is increasing year on year.

As we have seen all too clearly over recent weeks, the opportunities Australian women are given to contribute to the public life of the nation are limited, and come with unacceptable risks. We now rank just 54th on political empowerment, well behind most developed nations; and at 99th, we are firmly in the bottom half of countries when it comes to women’s health and survival, which includes measures of violence and harassment.

How is it that women who are amongst the most educated in the world are falling so far behind on every other measure of success? What has gone wrong in Australia’s gender politics since the heady days of the 1980s, when we made such great strides towards equality between men and women?

Last year, just before the pandemic diverted our attention from almost every other issue in public life, Per Capita published a landmark report that showed that the causes of women’s economic, social and material disadvantage in Australia begin shortly after birth, and compound across the duration of their lives.

Gathering research from leading gender economists and sociologists, and the most recent publicly available data, Measure for Measure: Gender Equality in Australia demonstrated that Australian women begin to fall behind their male peers as soon as they leave school: they earn less, take on more unpaid domestic work, work fewer hours, interrupt their careers to care for others, work in underpaid feminised industries, are overlooked for promotions, encounter systemic ignorance of their health needs, are vastly under-represented in the media and on the sporting field, work twice as hard to achieve positions of leadership in business, struggle to break through the ranks of political power, experience harassment, abuse and violence both in the home and in the workplace, and ultimately retire into much greater levels of poverty than men in their old age.

The state of gender equality in Australia is, put simply, shameful. And it’s getting worse, at a rapid pace.

If we are to meaningfully address this national crisis, we need much more than a cabinet reshuffle and empathy courses for male leaders who make a mockery of the concept of merit in political life.

The countries that are now out-performing Australia on the GGGI produce an annual review of national performance against gender equality targets. They have gender budget units in their treasury, as well as government architecture and funding to monitor performance and drive progress.

Ultimately, what is required to deliver gender equality in Australia is an unequivocal commitment to close the gender gap in every sphere of life, through a strong legislative framework and the reinstatement of our once world-leading machinery of government to track progress.

We need leaders who aren’t still trying to get it, but are committed to getting it done.

Because Australian women are among the smartest, hardest working and most educated in the world – we aren’t the problem, our society is.

Emma Dawson is executive director of progressive think tank Per Capita.