A paper into occupational roles shows that the gender divide is persisting across key industries, despite an increasing number of women entering the workforce.
A new report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) says there are still high levels of gender segregation.
Female participation in the workforce has risen by 41 per cent since 1980, but there are still clear female and male-dominated areas of the workforce.
Women are severely underrepresented in construction and STEM fields, which include industries such as science, technology and agriculture.
In fact, in the already female-dominated education and healthcare sector, the proportion of women has increased.
CEDA CEO Melinda Cilento says a segregated workforce is detrimental to the individual as well as workforce productivity.
If you've got barriers to people working in sectors based on their gender, it means on an individual level people are not able the work they want to or are good at. It means we're limiting flexibility in work places and we're actually putting a lid on productivity. I think one of the best examples of that is the construction sector which is very male dominated, and recent research there has shown that when you increase diversity and when you increase the number of women working in that sector, you see improved communication, improved productivity and improved safety, and actually improved wellbeing across men working in the sector, so better mental health for instance.
