Working for Women Research Partnership – Research Agenda

Objectives of the Research Partnership

The Working for Women Research Partnership (the Partnership) brings together a national team of interdisciplinary researchers with deep expertise in the gendered dynamics of working life, in collaboration with the Australian Government Office for Women. The Partnership will run for five years from 2025 - 2030, and aims to build the robust evidence base needed to support implementation of Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality (the Strategy). The Partnership will generate high-quality, nationally-representative, and inclusive data to inform targeted action and strengthen collaboration across government, industry and the community. The research will illuminate the opportunities and barriers shaping gendered experiences and inequalities in Australian working life today. It will bring the real-world concerns of key workforce cohorts into policy and public debate through rigorously designed studies. A central focus of the Partnership is generating new data to fill critical gaps in the evidence base, ensuring the lived experiences and aspirations of diverse labour market participants across the life course are reflected—including a strong emphasis on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The Partnership is designed to deliver actionable, practical, and innovative insights to inform government and stakeholder interventions and drive sustained change. It will offer context-sensitive evidence to guide policy reform, support inclusive industry practice, and enable community-led solutions. It will also help build long-term, data-informed partnerships across sectors, extending the reach and impact of the Strategy.

Principles

The Partnership is guided by six core principles:

1. Aligning with government priorities

The Partnership will align with and support government priorities across relevant policy portfolios and programs. It will take into account parallel initiatives led by government agencies to ensure relevance, complementarity, and strong uptake of findings.

2. Engaging with government and stakeholders

The Partnership will maintain structured engagement with the Office for Women and a broad range of stakeholders through governance and consultative forums. These mechanisms bring together voices from government, industry, unions, community organisations, and academia. Ongoing feedback loops and cross-sector consultation will ensure the research remains grounded in policy and practice, supports relevance and impact, and identifies opportunities to connect evidence with action.

3. Centring the voices of key cohorts and applying an intersectional lens

The Partnership will centre the experiences, aspirations, and concerns of key workforce cohorts—capturing ‘kitchen table’ conversations that reveal what matters most to those most affected by gender inequality at work. It will apply an intersectional lens to understand strengths of key cohorts, as well as how overlapping forms of disadvantage shape these experiences. The Partnership will prioritise voices often missing from research and public policy, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, women living in regional, rural and remote areas, migrants, LGBTQI+ people, and workers with disability or chronic health conditions. This approach ensures that the research reflects Australia’s diverse workforce and population.

4. Using and collecting data strategically

The Partnership will build on existing datasets and align with ongoing government and academic data efforts. It will address critical gaps in knowledge across demographic groups, life stages, regions, sectors, and industries, and generate new data where needed to support targeted, effective policymaking and action. Strategic, data-led approaches—including Indigenous-led methodologies—will be used to identify significant trends across priority groups and guide the direction of the Partnership.

5. Building research capability and collaboration

The Partnership will draw on cutting-edge local and global scholarship to identify challenges, inform methods, and test pathways forward. Senior academic leaders and emerging scholars will work together in a collaborative model that builds capability in engaged, policy-relevant research. Early and mid-career researchers will be actively involved across all stages of the Partnership, strengthening Australia’s research capacity in gender and work. This unique partnership integrates academic, policy, and community expertise to deliver forward-looking, high-impact research.

6. Driving pathways to action

The Partnership will prioritise innovative, applied, and solution-focused research that informs both policy and practice. It will move beyond problem description to deliver actionable insights, identifying where and how interventions can make a meaningful impact. The research will consider both breadth and depth of impact to identify practical pathways for change.

The research team

The Partnership is delivered by an academic consortium of 26 academics with disciplinary expertise across industrial relations, sociology, economics, education, social policy, criminology, and public health. Consortium members are recognised nationally and internationally for research excellence, and have strong track records of collaboration with government, industry, unions, and community stakeholders to advance gender equality. The team brings analytical expertise at multiple levels—individual, organisational, industry, and national—enabling deep insight into labour markets, women’s life and career-course experiences, and work-care dynamics. All consortium members apply an intersectional lens in their research, recognising how overlapping forms of disadvantage shape access to and experiences of work, care, and economic security.

The consortium is led by the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion @ Work at the University of Sydney, which is responsible for overall project design and delivery. The Centre contributes research insight and expertise in the structural drivers of gender inequality at work, workplace dynamics in hyper-masculine sectors, culturally and linguistically diverse worker experiences, labour market dynamics, skills and participation, productivity, young workers, work and care across the life course, pay equity, career navigation, leadership, sexual harassment and violence, and workforce issues in frontline jobs and the education sector. The Centre for Indigenous People and Work at the University of Technology Sydney brings specialised expertise in Indigenous-led workforce engagement, First Nations businesses and entrepreneurship, gendered workplace experiences, and yarning-based data collection methodologies. Researchers from the University of Melbourne contribute expertise on women’s working lives and the intersections between paid work, unpaid care, domestic violence, health, and well-being. Their work has a strong focus on women from diverse backgrounds, including migrant women, queer women, and young women.

Additional academic members from institutions across Australia contribute research aligned with the priorities of the Strategy, including work on women and families experiencing disadvantage, labour market regulation, working time, care, wellbeing, and economic security across the life course.

*A full list of researchers appears at the end of this document.

Data collection method and outputs

The Partnership will generate original, high-quality data each year through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. A nationally representative survey of approximately 5,000 Australian labour market participants aged 18–70.¹ This will include booster samples to ensure meaningful insights from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, LGBTQ+ and migrant workers. The Partnership will collect data from focus groups involving around 400 workers each year. These conversations will reflect the agreed yearly cohort and thematic priorities, using culturally appropriate and trauma-informed approaches and will utilise Indigenous-led methodologies where relevant.

Each year, three major outputs will be produced, delivered separately throughout the year:

• Thematic Reports: will explore critical issues shaping economic equality and workforce participation.
• Cohort Reports: will provide detailed insights into key population groups (and priority occupational or industry groups.
• Actionable Insight Reports: will synthesise findings across the Thematic and Cohort Reports, offering clear, data-informed proposals for action to drive structural change.

Research themes

The Partnership will gather data and conduct research on what women, men, and workplaces can do to support government priorities including lifting workforce participation, boosting productivity, and driving inclusive growth. To do this, research conducted under the Partnership will focus on several key themes that align with the priorities in the Strategy.

Thematic and cohort research priorities will be decided in advance of each annual cycle ensuring alignment with emerging government, community and industry priorities, and to avoid duplication with other emerging work in the sector.

Key themes explored in the Partnership include, but will not be limited to:

High-quality, flexible work

This stream investigates the economic benefits of high-quality, flexible work, exploring the barriers and enablers to accessing secure, skill-matched jobs with flexible conditions. Insights will help government, employers, unions, and industry bodies promote job design and workplace practices that support participation across genders, life stages and industries.

This stream will be the focus of research in 2025-26, with women aged 40-55 the cohort for more comprehensive analysis.

Gender segregation in male-dominated and female-dominated industries

This stream explores the experiences of workers in highly gender-segregated industries and how gendered dynamics affect inclusion, progression, and job quality. Job quality includes the value and conditions ascribed to the work. This stream will include a focus on education and training pathways. Findings will support government, unions, and employers to address cultural and structural barriers in key sectors.

Experiences of work and care

This stream examines how unpaid care responsibilities shape access to, and experiences of, paid work across the life course. It will inform policies and workplace supports that enable carers to participate and progress in the workforce.

Sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace

This stream investigates the impact of workplace sexual harassment and discrimination on safety, wellbeing, and career outcomes. Findings will guide government, regulators, unions, and employers in strengthening prevention, support, and accountability.

Impact of violence on women and working lives

This stream explores the long-term economic impacts of gender-based violence on women’s employment and economic security. It will support coordinated action across government, employers, unions, and services to improve economic participation and recovery.

References

1. Labour market participants includes people who are employed, or are unemployed but are looking for work. People who are not employed and are not looking for work are not defined as labour market participants. Return to footnote 1 ↩

Appendix: Research team