Every year on 8 March we come together to acknowledge and celebrate the role of women in every aspect of life – and to call for a safer, fairer and more equal world for women everywhere.
This year’s theme Count Her In: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress identifies women’s economic empowerment as an essential part of a gender equal world.
Economic equity means fairly recognising everyone’s social and economic contributions, levelling the playing field for people who face additional or compounding barriers, regardless of their gender.
For women, economic inequity shows up in so many aspects of their lives, with far reaching consequences. In the workforce we see consistently lower pay in traditionally women-dominated industries like healthcare and social assistance. Meanwhile, men are over-represented in higher paying, more secure work in industries like construction, transport and mining. This is a major driver of the gender pay gap. Women are also more likely to work in low-paid, casual and insecure jobs, are under-represented in leadership roles. And they face significant barriers to progression and access to higher pay.
On top of this, many women face intersecting economic barriers due to the discrimination and inequality they experience based on factors like ethnicity or cultural background, disability, age or sexuality.
The gender pay gap still sits at 21.7 per cent meaning women take home roughly $26,000 less each year, on average, than their male counterparts.
The theme Count Her In encourages us to think about the pathways to greater economic inclusion for women and girls. One of those pathways is increasing women’s participation and equity in masculine-dominated industries. The Victorian Government is doing this with almost $3 million to develop Women in Manufacturing and Energy Strategies.
The aim is to support the attraction, recruitment, retention and advancement of Victorian women in industries where they’ve traditionally been underrepresented.
This work is a key action within Our Equal State, the Victorian Government’s gender equality strategy. It builds on previous strategies, and sets out 110 whole of Victorian Government actions to progress gender equality. Thirty-six of these actions directly relate to improving economic equity for all Victorian women.
More information
For more information, visit the Celebrate Victorian women and the Our equal state: Victoria’s gender equality strategy and action plan 2023–2027 webpages.