Men and women have equal rights on paper, but have the genders reached equal opportunity?
New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show while progress is being made, women are still far from breaking through the glass ceiling.
Dean Adams from the Bureau says the number of female CEOs has hardly changed in ten years.
The figures also show little improvement in achieving equal pay.
Women earn less overall, averaging 89 per cent of men’s wages – and that’s also stayed stagnant for a decade.
Kate Lee, from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, blames a chronic undervaluing of female-dominated professions.
Women continue to forge ahead in levels of education.
As of 2017, about 45 per cent of women had attained a bachelor’s degree or above by the age of 30, compared to 32 per cent of men.
However ACTU president Michele O'Neil says that fact is yet to yield results when it comes to maintaining fulltime employment.
Figures on earnings and employment show women are more likely to be employed part-time, at 44 per cent compared to men at 16 per cent.
Women are also still under-represented in positions of power.
In the House of Representatives, 71.3 per cent are men and 28.7 per cent are women while in the Senate, 61.1 per cent are men and 38.9 per cent are women.
The breakdown of the genders in CEO positions reveals 83 per cent are men, while 17 per cent are women.
The Prime Minister has ruled out introducing gender quotas to address the disparity in his own party.
Labor's spokeswoman on women is Tanya Plibersek.
She calls the culture within the Liberal party toxic.
