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Gender inequalities have steadily declined, but remain particularly visible in the labour market. Australian women have lower employment rates, hourly wages and hours worked than their male counterparts. Childbirth is particularly disruptive for the labour market experience of women in Australia. Reforms to the tax and benefits system, childcare and parental leave arrangements are all needed to reduce the barriers to female labour participation of mothers. At the same time, ensuring the adequacy of unemployment benefits will support the living standards of many low-income women given that they have become an increasing share of recipients. Single mothers face particularly high poverty risk and would also benefit from more robust arrangements around child support payments from non-custodial parents.

This paper investigates the link between gender diversity in senior management and firm-level productivity. For this purpose, it constructs a novel cross-country dataset with information on firms’ senior management group and other firm characteristics, covering both publicly listed and unlisted firms in manufacturing and non-financial market services across nine OECD countries. The main result from the analysis is that productivity gains from increasing gender diversity in senior management are highest among firms with low initial diversity. Increasing the female share to the sample average of 20% in firms with initially lower shares would increase aggregate productivity by around 0.6%. This suggests that improving women’s access to senior management positions matters not only for equity but could yield significant productivity gains.

There are large cross-country variations in the employment rates of people aged 55 to 69. In 2022, Czechia had the highest rates for those aged 55 to 59, at 88.6%, Iceland is highest for individuals aged 60‑64 at 79.7% and 50.9% is the highest for those aged 65 to 69, in Japan. By contrast, the lowest employment rates were found in Türkiye where employment rates for people aged 55 to 59 were only around 40%, more than 20 percentage points lower than any other OECD country. At ages 60‑64 and 65‑69 Luxembourg recorded the lowest employment rates in 2022, with 23.4% and 6.6% respectively.

The Government of Australia has made improving gender equality one of its core priorities, recognising the potential social and economic benefits that it can bring. This OECD Review assists Australia in embedding gender considerations in policy and budget decisions. It draws upon best practices across OECD countries and sets out a series of actions to enable the federal government to strengthen gender impact assessments and gender budgeting. This will help target government policy and resources towards better and fairer social and economic outcomes.

This chapter examines the current framework for gender mainstreaming and gender impact assessment in Australia. It offers an assessment of strengths, challenges and gaps in relation to the governance arrangements for promoting gender equality policy. It looks at the capacity of the public administration to implement new requirements related to gender impact assessment. It also provides recommendations on how these aspects could be strengthened to support the delivery of the government’s ambitious gender equality agenda.

This chapter examines the implementation of gender budgeting in Australia. It offers an assessment of strengths, challenges and gaps in relation to Australia’s strategic framework for gender budgeting, the tools of implementation and the enabling environment. It also provides recommendations on how Australia’s approach to gender budgeting can be further developed to ensure an impactful and enduring practice.

This chapter outlines the main recommendations of the OECD Review aimed at bolstering efforts in Australia to strengthen gender considerations in policy and budget decisions and accelerate progress towards gender equality.

There continues to be significant gender gaps in entrepreneurship, including in terms of the numbers of start-ups, their economic impact and the ability of women entrepreneurs to access resources. While some progress has been made, economies are losing innovation and jobs due to these gaps. This chapter presents data on trends in women’s entrepreneurship and self-employment across European Union Member States and OECD countries, including activity rates, characteristics and barriers. It also provides an overview of policy approaches and recent policy developments.

Women’s employment rates and wages are still lagging those of men across OECD countries, with average employment and wage gaps now around 15% and 12% respectively. Gaps narrowed at a relatively modest pace over the past decade, calling for further policy action. A lack of affordable high-quality childcare is often an obstacle to women’s participation in the labour market and notably to working full time. A very unequal sharing of parental leave between parents and challenges upon return to work further hampers women’s careers. Biases in the tax system may discourage women from working in some countries. Women face disadvantage in accessing management positions and entrepreneurship. A range of policies can help reduce gender gaps, including better childcare provision, incentivising parents to better share parental leave, re-skilling and upskilling on return from parental leave, encouraging gender equality within firms, integration programmes for foreign-born women, promoting women entrepreneurship and financial inclusion, and levelling taxation for second earners. Moreover, the multiple dimensions and root causes of gender inequality call for mainstreaming gender across policy domains.

An alarming number of women and girls become victims/survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) at least once during their lifetime. While GBV has garnered more attention from policymakers in recent years, and has become a top gender-equality priority for OECD countries, significant challenges remain in all countries. This report promotes a comprehensive approach to breaking the cycle of GBV by combining insights from recent OECD work with robust evidence from surveys and questionnaires conducted in OECD Member countries. It offers recommendations for a comprehensive OECD GBV Governance Framework encompassing laws and access to justice, transforming restrictive gender norms, and integrating service delivery to prevent, address and - ultimately - end this violation of human rights.

This chapter examines elements of the whole-of-state approach to addressing gender-based violence (GBV). It explores how governments can build effective responses to GBV through holistic policies that engage all state actors and account for the experiences of all victims/survivors. The chapter concludes with an examination of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on GBV systems in OECD member countries and highlights good practices and recommendations to improve whole-of-state systems to tackle GBV. The findings are based on 26 countries’ responses to the 2022 OECD Survey on Strengthening Governance and Survivor/Victim-centric Approaches to End GBV (2022 OECD GBV Survey).

This chapter explores the prevalence and costs of gender-based violence (GBV), including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It introduces a comprehensive approach for tackling GBV through legal and a whole-of-government framework, developing a victim/survivor-centred culture and establishing robust accountability mechanisms.

This chapter explores the elements of victim/survivor governance and service culture. It identifies practices that understand the experiences of victims/survivors and account for them in all policies, services and programming. Prevention efforts that tackle the root causes of gender-based violence (GBV) are also a key element of building a victim/survivor-centred culture, with a focus on engaging men and boys. The chapter explores good practices and challenges that emerged out of the COVID-19 pandemic and concludes with recommendations on how to strengthen victim/survivor-centric governance and service culture. The findings are based on 26 countries’ responses to the 2022 OECD Survey on Strengthening Governance and Survivor/Victim-centric Approaches to End GBV (2022 OECD GBV Survey).

This chapter focuses on victim/survivor-centred access to justice and accountability, as key elements in preventing and responding to gender-based violence (GBV), under the Access to Justice and Accountability Pillar of the OECD GBV Framework. It examines key aspects of access to justice, including paid leave, accessible information, prosecution and punishment mechanisms, and highlights good practices across all aspects. It also examines COVID-19’s impact on access to justice and explores the role of data on victims/survivors and perpetrators in preventing femicide/feminicide. The chapter concludes with recommendations to improve access to justice and accountability. The findings are based on 26 countries’ responses to the 2022 OECD Survey on Strengthening Governance and Survivor/Victim-centric Approaches to End GBV (2022 OECD GBV Survey).

This chapter presents an overview of the global legal landscape regarding gender-based violence (GBV): it begins with a description of existing international and regional legal instruments designed to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. The chapter highlights similarities and differences among different national legal frameworks that govern various forms of GBV, including domestic violence, rape, and sexual harassment as well as female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage. It concludes with good practices and recommendations for more comprehensive legal systems. The findings are based on the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) and on 24 countries’ responses to the SIGI Gender-Based Violence Legal Survey (SIGI GBV Legal Survey).

The OECD review of Gender Equality in Colombia: Towards a Better Sharing of Paid and Unpaid Work is the third in a collection of reports focusing on Latin American and the Caribbean countries, and part of the series Gender Equality at Work. The report compares gender gaps in labour and educational outcomes in Colombia with other countries. Particular attention is put on the uneven distribution of unpaid work, and the extra burden this places on women. It investigates how policies and programmes in Colombia can make this distribution more equitable. The first part of the report reviews the evidence on gender gaps and on what causes these, including the role played by attitudes. The second part develops a comprehensive framework to address these challenges, presenting a broad range of options to reduce the unpaid work burden falling on women, and to increase women’s labour income. Earlier reviews in the same collection have looked at gender equality policies in Chile (2021) and Peru (2022).

This chapter reviews the evidence on gender gaps in economic and educational outcomes in Colombia. It starts with an overview of gender gaps in educational and labour market outcomes across different dimensions (enrolment and out-of-school rates, skills outcomes, along with labour market participation, gender pay gaps and the interactions between motherhood and access to quality jobs). It then discusses the factors contributing to these gaps (the unbalanced distribution of unpaid care and domestic work, gender-based stereotypes, the role of legal barriers, the access to care facilities, infrastructural barriers, and gender-based violence). In addition to comparing Colombia with OECD and other Latin American countries, the chapter addresses the articulation of gender differences across socio‑economic groups. This includes paying attention to urban and rural differences, along with differences across educational attainments, age cohorts, and income.

What has competition got to do with gender? Competition authorities play a crucial role in shaping fair and thriving markets. However, the connection between competition and gender is often overlooked. This Toolkit equips competition authorities with the knowledge and tools necessary to incorporate gender considerations into their work. The Toolkit offers an evidence-based approach, going beyond theory to provide concrete recommendations that can enhance the accuracy of analysis, facilitate cartel investigations and optimise advocacy efforts. Drawing from gender research in related policy areas such as corporate governance, anti-corruption, and behavioural economics, this Toolkit provides a comprehensive framework for integrating gender considerations. By incorporating this Toolkit into their day-to-day operations, competition authorities can contribute even more to the advancement of fair and efficient markets that benefit individuals of all genders.

The Toolkit for Mainstreaming and Implementing Gender Equality 2023 is a practical resource to help governments, parliaments and judiciaries implement the OECD Recommendation on Gender Equality in Public Life. It contains self-assessment tools to guide governments and other decision-making institutions in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their policies, mechanisms, and frameworks for gender equality, and in setting priorities for improvement. The Toolkit highlights a range of possible actions to take and pitfalls to avoid in implementing the various provisions of the Recommendation. A revision of the 2018 online Toolkit on Mainstreaming and Implementing Gender Equality, it introduces concepts such as intersectionality and the future of work; includes expanded areas such as budgeting, public procurement and infrastructure; and provides the latest lessons and good practices from OECD countries.