Australia’s workforce remains highly gender segregated
Across the workforce, women and men are concentrated in different industries. Of 19 industries, just eight have at least 40% women and men. Women are concentrated in Health Care and Social Assistance and Education and Training and are least represented in Construction and Mining.
Mining, Transport, Postal and Warehousing, Public Administration and Safety, and Administrative and Support Services are the only four industries where women are not under-represented in management compared to representation across the industry. All other industries, even female-dominated ones, have a lower proportion of women in management compared to women in the workforce. Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (17.2pp), Financial and Insurance Services (13.7pp), Arts and Recreation Services (13.8pp) and Wholesale Trade (11.6pp) have the biggest gap between representation of women in the workforce and representation of women in management.
Where do women and men work?
Women’s workforce participation is concentrated in a few large industries. Health Care and Social Assistance is by far the largest employer of women, followed by Education and Training and Retail Trade.
Men are more evenly spread across the workforce than women, although they have low representation in the highly-feminised
industry of Health Care and Social Assistance.
Workforce composition by gender dominance
Over half of Australian employees work in industries that are dominated by one gender. An organisation or industry is classified as gender mixed if it has at least 40% representation of both women and men.