Women in the Workforce

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN (14:45): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills a question regarding improving the participation rate for women in key employment industries in South Australia.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN: Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force data, it is evident that men are outnumbering women in key industries in South Australia. In fact, according to the ABS data, as of February 2014 there were 95,000 male technicians and trade workers, compared with 8,000 female technicians and trade workers; 69,400 male managers, compared with 34,800 female managers; and 51,200 male machinery operators and drivers, compared with 5,300 female machinery operators and drivers. In fact, the only industry group where woman outnumbered men was in the sales and personal services work.

Will the minister explain why there is continuing to be such an ongoing disparity between the number of men and woman engaged in these industries in South Australia?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:46): I thank the honourable member for his most important question. This is very similar to a question I answered previously, or it certainly relates to it. A report back in 2009 from Sachs and Were on gender productivity and employment participation, called 'Australia's hidden resource: the economic case for increasing female participation', estimates that closing the gap between men and women's employment in Australia would boost Australia's GDP by 11 per cent and, according to that report, other economic benefits of improving women's productivity include things like alleviating labour market shortages, lowering interest rates, raising income and demand, and improving public finances.

The report suggests a number of policy initiatives to address the potential of women's economic participation. It looked at things like more flexible work arrangements and education programs, greater pay equity, encouraging career paths in non-traditional industries, maintaining links with training and employers during parental leave, introducing quotas at board level, funding education programs within schools to debate stereotypes of women, choosing low paid/low hours clerical or social service-type roles, and finding workplace education programs that actually target discrimination, pay equity and the stigma attached to using flexible work arrangements.

We know that women are employed at substantially lower rates right across the board, and certainly in the higher paid positions. Recent figures show that only 67 per cent of women aged between 15 and 64 years are currently in paid work, compared with 78 per cent of men; 45 per cent of these women work full time, and in September 2013 there were approximately 460,000 women working part time and wanting to work more hours.

So, we see that women are underrepresented in some key industries and also in management and leadership positions, which I have just talked about here today. Industries that have the greatest representation of women at all levels include health, education, training and, of course, retail. Females are underrepresented in mining, utilities, construction and a wide range of other areas.

This government has committed to a range of initiatives that address many of those areas, including our STEM initiatives. I have talked about STEM in this place before, so I do not need to go over it again, but these initiatives assist in attracting more women into the science and maths area, areas of potentially high growth and high wages. So we have a number of things in that area.

In relation to work-life balance, or improving workplace flexibility, we have put a number of things in place, including introducing policy into our public sector. It was incorporated in the latest Public Sector Act, which entitles public servants to access flexible workplace entitlements, and we see it as part of this government's election commitment. Just recently we strengthened this by linking access to flexible workplace provisions to chief executives' performances, so they will be required to demonstrate that they are, in effect, putting measures in place to encourage both men and women to access more flexible workplace arrangements to assist in childcare provisions. Unfortunately, we know that although those provisions have now been around for a number of years, the ability of men and women, in particular, to access those are limited for a range of reasons, usually cultural. That is why we made changes to the chief executives' performance outcomes.

As members can see, there is a range of initiatives that we have put in place. I have talked about initiatives in terms of our leadership, encouraging women into leadership programs and developing them in that respect, and, as I said, we have also invested efforts into encouraging more young people to consider STEM careers through Skills for All. That has led to $25.4 million in funded training to support students in those particular courses for the 2012-13 year. We have also recently launched a STEM Australia web portal, an interactive website aimed at attracting students and workers to pursue STEM careers. There is a women's component of that, in particular, that is designed to attract girls and young women to access those initiatives as well.