The Australia Institute’s submission to the inquiry into parliamentary workplaces focused on the experiences of several of our senior staff in their time as parliamentary staff.

The Australia Institute surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,004 Australians about their attitudes towards free and universal childcare.

Budget policy has traditionally advantaged men over women. This paper makes seven recommendations on how to improve women’s economic security and use the budget as a tool to reduce gender inequality.

This briefing note presents data on the gendered composition of the employment recovery since May. It shows women’s jobs returned on a more part-time and casualised basis than for men, and that the influx of women’s lower-earning jobs widened the gender pay gap between May and November 2020. While women were more likely to lose

A comparison of the impact on employment of child care expenditure and income tax cuts of an equivalent net cost to the budget. The clear superiority of childcare expenditure in stimulating economic activity reflects the concentration of the benefit on a cohort with much greater capacity for labour supply response.

The benefit from bringing forward personal income tax cuts would mostly go to high income men. Despite recession job losses affecting women more than men, $2.19–$2.28 of the tax cut will go to men for every $1 that goes to women.

The health response to COVID-19 has resulted in large increases in measured unemployment and underemployment as well as large falls in the total number of hours worked. While the size of these labour market effects has been widely discussed, the gender distribution of these impacts has not.

Of the tax cuts in the 2018 Federal Budget, Australian women get half the tax cut of men. New research today by The Australia Institute shows about two thirds of the benefit of the income tax cuts proposed will flow to men, while previous spending cuts have mainly disadvantaged women.

Today is International Women’s Day, a time to reflect on the continued inequality faced by women — including in the world of work.  Traditional measures of the “gender pay gap” indicate that women earn around 17 percent less than men, in ordinary pay in equivalent full-time positions.  But the situation is worse than that, because

Economic insecurity is one of the greatest factors inhibiting victims of domestic violence from escaping violent situations at home.  To address that problem unions and employers have developed paid domestic violence leave provisions which allow victims to attend legal proceedings, medical appointments, or other events or activities related to the violence they have experienced, without

This report by Catalyst Australia looks at the representation of women in leadership at companies included in the ASX50. This index lists Australia’s largest publicly-owned companies that are considered leaders in their industry. This research assesses the ASX50 companies and gender equality in four areas: boards, management, policies and practices, and the gender pay gap.

Successive governments have made large changes in taxation and spending measures that have disproportionately affected women. Men have benefitted most from tax cuts while the cuts to services have primarily impacted on women – a double disadvantage. Before the Global Financial Crisis, income tax cuts were a key feature of fiscal policy for successive Federal

The Australia Institute conducted an online survey in November 2013. Respondents were sourced from a reputable independent online panel who earn reward points to participate. Results were post weighted (n = 1404) by age and gender based on the profile of the adult Australian population. Small variations in sample size can occur from rounding errors

There is much public debate about the role of ‘choice’ when it comes to women and work in Australia – but structural factors appear to play a stronger role in shaping the labour market experience of women. The persistent gap between male and female remuneration for similar work and the gendered nature of informal care

Recent government approaches to childcare funding have been simple rather than innovative. Improvements in affordability have been short lived, with benefits quickly absorbed through higher costs charged to families. The result is an ongoing game of catch up between government and service providers with families stuck in the middle. Since 2001, the proportion of Australian

Australian women suffer a ‘wage penalty’ when they return to work after having a child, according to new research by the Australia Institute. In the first year back at work, women can expect to earn around four per cent less per hour on average than they would if they had not had a child, the

Examines the experience of Australian women during recent recessions in order to construct a framework within which the policy response to the current recession can be assessed and improved. The recessions of the early 1980s and the early 1990s are examined and compared with the brief experience so far of the present recession.

In responding to the release of the recent Productivity Commission (PC) draft report into paid parental leave, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stated: ‘This Australian Government believes the time has come to bite the bullet on this and we intend to do so’. He did not however commit to addressing the issue before the 2009 Federal

Our submission supports a minimum of 26 weeks paid leave. This would be funded through a mix of employment related and government transfer payments to families. The government transfers would be available to working and non-working families while employment related entitlements would apply to working women and men.

Concerns have been raised about the quality of care provided by corporate chain child care centres (see Australia Institute Discussion Paper 84). ABC Learning Centres is the largest corporate child care chain in Australia, providing more than 20 per cent of all long day care places. This paper reports the results of interviews carried out

Recent public debate about the child care system in Australia has focused primarily on the availability and affordability of child care. This paper considers an aspect of child care that has received much less attention, that of the quality of the care provided. Results from a national survey of long day care centre staff suggest

A study of the attitudes of teenagers showing that the gender wars are set to continue into the next generation with boys and girls making conflicting plans about who will do the housework and look after the children.

Unpublished ABS data shows that 23,000 Australian children from low and middle income families are being priced out of child care:12,000 children from low income families and 11,000 children from middle income families miss out on child care because of cost, and they are more likely to experience developmental disabilities as a result.

Examines the perspective of young people about their parents’ paid and unpaid work, its implications for their lives and the links between work and consumption.

Shifting social and economic conditions have both intensified the obstacles to, and created new possibilities for, involved fathering and more sophisticated strategies are needed on the part of the community and government to enable men to capitalise on these recent possibilities.