‘Attitudinal change’ necessary to achieve financial equality: Financy

Yasmine Raso

Senior Journalist, Financial Newswire

6 September 2024

The latest results of the Financy Women’s Index (FWX) has confirmed “outdated gender norms” continue to hamper progress on gender financial equality, despite increased labour market participation.

For the June quarter, the FWX fell by 0.2 points to 77.5 from March’s revised result of 77.7. The figures come despite improvement in the index over the last 12 months, gaining 2.36 points from June 2023’s 74.8 points.

Financy founder and CEO, Bianca Hartge-Hazelman, said the new figures reflect the impact of “persistent gender norms” that still manage to overpower progress made for females.

“Similar to what we saw during the Coronavirus pandemic, women are once again bearing the brunt of economic uncertainty largely because they still tend to occupy more flexible and insecure forms of employment, such as part-time and casual roles,” she said.

“As business conditions weaken, these roles are more likely to be adjusted, with hours reduced to the detriment of the female workforce.”

This quarter’s FWX score was also influenced by the positive improvement in the national gender pay gap which fell to 11.5 per cent in May, allowing the FWX Gender Pay Gap sub-index to climb 0.5 points to 88.5.

However, other sub-indexes suffered in the last quarter with the FWX Employment sub-index, which reflects the gender gap in monthly hours worked, dropped to 75.4 from 75.6 in March; the FWX Underemployment sub-index also fell one percentage point to 71.2, after the female underemployment rate rose to 7.71 per cent as the male rate dropped six percentage points to 5.22 per cent.

The FWX also tracks several metrics to determine what year gender equality will be achieved, with several improvements made in the past 12 months:

• ASX 200 Board Leadership: Gender equality is expected by 2030, with a current wait time of 5.2 years, down from 5.7 years 12 months ago.
• Gender Pay Gap: Equality is expected by 2047 with a 22.6 years wait to close this gap, an improvement from 24.3 years in June 2023.
• Superannuation: Equality is expected by 2042 with a wait of 17.7-years.
• Underemployment Rate: Equality is expected by 2024 with a 20.2-year wait.
• Employment: Equality is expected by 2049 with a 24.6-year wait.
• Unpaid Work: Equality is expected by 2070 with a 45.5 year wait.
• Education: Equality is expected by 2414 with little progress being made and a troubling wait of 389.2 years.