Australian women are helping to drive the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, new data from the The Financy Women’s Index indicates.
The Index measures and tracks the financial progress of Australian women and the timeframe to gender equality on a quarterly basis, and reports that unlike past economic downturns, Australian women are helping to drive the recovery.
This is being driven by workforce participation at record highs and the fastest rate of improvement in over 40 years in the number of monthly hours worked by any gender in the March quarter.
According to the figures for the period, the Index rose by 0.7 points to a revised 71.6 points and is up 1.8 points on March 2020.
According to Financy, these figures represent the best start to a calendar year since 2018.
Encouragingly, Financy reports that the recovery is being aided by a rebound in sectors hit hardest by the pandemic, including the retail trade, accommodation and food services industries.
Women's Index founder Bianca Hartge-Hazelman welcomed the figures with cautious optimism.
"It’s fantastic to see that female employment is bouncing back in many of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic shutdowns.
"However when we look at what this means for gender equality in employment, the rebound shaved four years off the now 30 year timeframe for achieving that.
"While it’s a step in the right direction, it’s actually reflective of the slowest pace of annual progress since 2018," she said.
Financy reports that March quarter result has been driven by new data updates across the three subindex areas: employment, underemployment and leadership.
Employment data shows a record increase in female workforce participation, as well as improvement in the underemployment rate gender gap and a new high in women holding ASX 200 board directorships.
"[However], the question remains: is this women-led recovery in jobs a correction, or is it a sign of things to come?," Deloitte Access Economics partner Simone Cheung said.
"We will have to wait and see.
"What we do next will be critical, and will determine whether this momentum is maintained, or whether things reverts to the pre-COVID norm," she said.
While the figures have largely been welcomed, AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said other sub-indexes of the Women's Index remain far behind.
"It’s excellent news to see the Financy Women’s Index resume its rising trend in the March quarter [but] in most areas we remain many years and in some cases decades away from achieving gender financial equality," he said.
Aside from the 30 years the Index estimates it will take to achieve equality employment, Financy estimates that the timeframe to achieving gender equality in underemployment remains around 17 years and it is likely to take seven years of sustained progress for complete gender diversity to be achieved on ASX 200 boards.
Meanwhile, the timeframe for achieving total gender equality stands at 101 years, based on the worst performing sub-index (unpaid work) of the Women’s Index.
While unpaid work may have worsened for women during the pandemic, Oliver added that the ability to work from home may have proven to be a solution to improving the state of unpaid work for women.
"The pandemic has showed that it’s possible to work from home in a more flexible way without negatively impacting productivity.
"And more working from home should further help boost female workforce participation thereby reducing their unpaid work.
"At the same time, more men working from home should allow them to more fairly share in household and parental chores.
"The key is to encourage and facilitate the work from home phenomenon so that its benefits can be nurtured rather than just go back to business as usual once the pandemic is behind us," he said.