Improve the Participation of Women Workforce in Australia Labour Market

Improve the participation of women workforce in

Australia labour market

1. Introduction

In 1961 there was just one-quarter of women accounts for the whole Australian workforce, including 17% married women whose age ranged from 25 to 34 (Wolcott 1994). However, the pattern is enormously different now, the number of the female participation rate in the labour market has increased dramatically.  The main reasons for the need for women workforce can be described as following, it is basically due to the continually increased number of the aging people and the demand for female carers is increasing.  Moreover, the manifestation of significant change on social and family structure, which result from a higher level of education, lower rates of fertility, increased rate of divorce, the change of economy and the blurred definition of the role of gender, also result in the rise of professional women in current society (McDonald 1994). However, even the increasing women involvement in workplace has enriched the labour market, with this increase that company with many issues as well. The major issues raised in recent decades are associated with paid parental leave, cost of child care and inequity in employment, these issues will be specifically discussed in this report. Furthermore, respect to these issues this report will also suggest some appropriate actions that the authority figures should take to consideration to address these problems.

In general, this report aim to make some tactical propositions to the associated authority figures, via an insightful understanding of the current situation in women participated labour market and current women employees related legislations, eventually through improving the participation of women in the labour force to increase the productivity of overall Australian economic.

2. Current situation analysis

2.1 The Workforce Participation of Women

The work force participation rate of Australian women has increased dramatically since the mid-1960s. Particularly, as the constraint of family responsibilities, the involvement of married women in the labour force has grown significantly (Eccles 1982).  According to the current official statistics, it shows 46% of the whole labour forces are accounted by women, among this proportion 24.7% are working as a full-time employee, and 21.3% are working as a part-time contractor. Moreover, within the all part-time employees and all casual workforces, women employees have contributed to a major proportion, with 69.1% and 54.7% respectively. However, the full-time women workers just account for 35.7% of all full-time contractor (Workplace Gender Equality Agency 2016).