How is the Index built?
The Index draws on large-scale, publicly available data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and Safe Work Australia.
The measures are selected for their relevance to gender equality at work, the reliability of the data and their usefulness in tracking change.
Most measures compare an outcome for women with the equivalent outcome for men. These comparisons are called parity ratios. The segmentation measures compare how women and men are distributed across different jobs and industries.
Each measure contributes equally to its dimension, and each of the seven dimensions contributes equally to the overall Index.
The data is collected at different intervals, so the reference years available can vary between measures.
Dimension
Measure
Are men and women equal in ..?
Participation
Labour force participation
Employment underutilisation
Pay
Hourly earnings
Weekly earnings
Hours
Working hours
Domestic work hours
Parental leave
Security
Casual employment
Income stability
Segmentation
Employment across industries
Employment across occupations
Stratification
Representation in lower paid jobs
Employment in senior and executive roles
Working in jobs below skill level
Safety
Sexual harassment at work
Workplace injury
Measures, Metrics & Data Sources
Each measure is calculated by comparing the outcomes of women and men and is expressed as either a parity ratio or a dissimilarity measure that show how close women and men are to being equal.
The Index and each dimension is expressed as a value between 0 and 100 where 100 indicates equality between women and men. The lower the score, the further Australia is from gender equality at work.
The Index is constructed using measures derived from large-scale, publicly available and nationally representative data that are collected regularly. Data used in the Index is from 2014 forward.
The Index provides governments, businesses, unions and the community with a reliable annual measure of how Australia is progressing on gender equality at work, and change over time. It serves as a diagnostic tool to identify areas where gender equality is stalled and highlights where additional action and investment could drive improvements.