(Bloomberg) — Australia’s Finance Minister Katy Gallagher will ask the world to not waste the opportunity to improve economic and gender equality in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying women have faced greater “economic consequences” of the crisis.
Gallagher, who is also Minister for Women, will say she wants her country to become a “global leader in gender equality” in a speech to the G-20 Women’s Empowerment Conference in Indonesia on Wednesday.
“There is one thing that we do know for sure: that right from the early months of the pandemic, women have borne the brunt of the economic consequences of the pandemic, largely through their roles as paid and unpaid carers,” she will say, according to an advance copy of her statement.
“We cannot waste this opportunity to learn from the experience of Covid and shape the care economy for the better in the future.”
Gender equality was a major issue in the 2022 election, where female voters were more likely than men to vote against the then-Liberal National coalition government following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct in parliament. Australia fell to 50th on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report in 2021, down from 15th place in 2006.
The new Labor government is planning to hold a Jobs and Skills Summit in the first days of September, which Gallagher said would examine “women’s economic equality.”
“Our care economy is a major focus because we know that is it is a critical constraint on women’s economic equality and our broader economic progress,” she said.
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