Assistant Minister for Social Security, Assistant Minister for Ageing, Assistant Minister for Women
This International Women's Day, the third annual Status of Women Report Card shows Australia is making strides to achieve gender equality, including economic equality for women and girls.
Policies introduced this term are contributing to progress, including narrowing the gender pay gap and lifting wages for aged care workers and early childhood educators.
The Report Card also reflects changes the Albanese Government has made to boost women's economic participation, such as making childcare cheaper, expanding paid parental leave (PPL) to six months, and paying superannuation on Government PPL.
Recent progress shows that persistent and dedicated action by governments, industry and the community can accelerate change. The 2025 report card shows:
- The national gender pay gap is 11.9 per cent, down from a record-high of 18.6 per cent 10 years ago.
- Australia is ranked 24th globally for gender equality, an improvement from 26th last year and a significant improvement from 43rd in 2023.
- More than half of Australian couples use paid childcare, a significant increase of 13.2 percentage points over the last 10 years.
- Women's workforce participation has reached a record high of 63.5 per cent.
- Men are taking more parental leave - 17 per cent of primary carer parental leave is now taken by men.
- 90 per cent of employers have a policy or strategy to support gender equality in the workplace.
- 37 women were killed by a current or former partner in 2024.
- Woman have 21.3 per cent less superannuation than men.
- Women do nine more hours of unpaid work and care every week than men.
- One in four women aged 45-64 years report that symptoms attributed to menopause make it hard to do daily activities.
- Women in the most senior levels of leadership are still paid substantially less than their male peers.
On International Women's Day 2023, the Albanese Labor Government committed to releasing the Report Card every International Women's Day in an effort to identify where progress on gender equality is still needed.
The report card includes some confronting statistics and confirms that serious inequalities remain between women and men:
Minister for Women, Senator Katy Gallagher, said the Report Card was an important reminder that progress cannot be taken for granted.
"The data shows that we can't just focus in one area and expect everything will be okay - we need to focus on jobs and pay, paid and unpaid care, safety and health, representation and education," Minister Gallagher said.
"As a government we have made women's equality a core economic imperative and that has allowed us to focus on all these areas and work to shift dials across the board.
"Our investment of more than half a billion dollars in women's healthcare is saving women thousands of dollars through lower costs of contraceptives, opening more endo and pelvic pain clinics and ensuring more reliable support for women going through menopause."
"Our workplace reforms and investment in wages in aged care and early childhood education are helping to close the gender pay gap, while our reforms to Paid Parental Leave are taking some of the sting out of the motherhood penalty and supporting men's care of their babies.
"The Government has invested $4 billion since the October 2022-23 Budget to support women's safety and deliver on the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children."
Assistant Minister for Women, Kate Thwaites, said that Australia is taking important steps forward in advancing gender equality.
"From our work to improve access and affordability of early childhood education, to reforming Paid Parental Leave to help parents share care, our Government has been working for women every day," Assistant Minister Thwaites said.
"Our support for boosting wages in aged care and early childhood education, both highly feminised industries, has helped to bring the gender pay gap down.
"Today's Report Card demonstrates how important it is that this work continues - we cannot afford to slow progress."
The report card is a key mechanism to check in on progress towards gender equality in Australia and supports the Government's Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality, which was released on the eve of International Women's Day 2024.
The Status of Women Report Card is available at Status of Women Report Cards(link is external)
