About the project
This work is pivotal to improving gender equality and essential for ensuring Australia realises its potential to create better and fairer outcomes for all.
Since the 1970s Australia has taken important steps to address gender inequality. But in the last two decades our global ranking has fallen or is at best stalled. At the current rate of change it is estimated that it will take over 100 years to achieve gender equality in Australia (World Economic Forum, 2022).
This ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate project, led by Professor Janeen Baxter, Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR), University of Queensland, aims to change this.
The project will provide a new theoretical approach that explains why we must turn our attention to caregiving and social relationships in the home to progress gender equality.
It will examine comparative data to identify turning points and life course events where divisions are created, reduced or magnified.
It will collect new in-depth evidence to understand priorities, expectations and lived experiences of women and men on the ground.
Diverse groups will be included to understand differences across communities and enable evidence that supports tailored approaches.
Project outcomes
Highlight the importance of care work for understanding and reducing gender inequality.
Collect and collate new data that will be available for other researchers.
Benefit Australia by showing how to reduce motherhood penalties in loss of employment and earnings and fatherhood penalties in loss of time with children.
Train and mentor a new generation of researchers.
Produce impactful new evidence to support new policies and approaches
Identify the life course stages where interventions will be most powerful.
Advance the potential of women and men by increasing knowledge, training, policy and practice for social cohesion and economic prosperity.
