10 September 2025
New research has found that social and cultural norms drive women and men to choose different education and training paths with flow on impacts for skills shortages and gender pay gaps. Current enrolment and completion trends show the trend is expected to continue.
Education and Training Divides, from Jobs and Skill’s Australia’s Gender Economic Equality Study, shows that only 1 in 5 fields of education (14 of the 71) see similar numbers of men and women completing education and training programs. This echoes recent JSA analysis that only 1 in 5 workers are in relatively gender-balanced occupations.
Deputy Commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia, Megan Lilly, said: “Our analysis shows that the gendered segregation in education and training pathways is persistent, and we will continue to see occupational gender segregation.”
The report highlighted that social and cultural norms still strongly influence girls and boys early in life and that these are reflected in their education and training choices and pathways, and subsequent occupation and career pathways.
Men generally achieve better economic outcomes than women across most qualifications, even in female dominated fields, in line with recent JSA analysis of gender pay gaps favouring men in 98 per cent of occupations.
Economic inequality persists post-training, with women consistently earning less and being more likely to exit the workforce despite being similarly or more qualified.
“Women are more likely to be ‘skills mismatched’ than men—working in occupations below their level of qualification—indicating underutilisation of female talent and skills at a time when employers are finding it difficult to fill skilled jobs,” Ms Lilly said.
Women and men tend to stay longer in occupations dominated by their own gender, reflecting gendered career decisions, which further contributes to occupational segregation over time.
As with the previous report, JSA also highlighted examples of where groups are seeing improved outcomes over time.
“Importantly our analysis highlights encouraging examples of relatively strong education and training and occupation outcomes for a range of groups, such as culturally and linguistically diverse women seeing strong early-career outcomes in IT fields, and First Nations men in trades,” Ms Lilly said.
The study is available on the JSA website
A third and final report from this JSA study is expected to be released in October.
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