The Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation has released its first Australian Women’s Health and Wellbeing Scorecard: Towards equity for women, which will be produced annually. The MCHRI annual scorecard captures women’s health and wellbeing outcomes in Australia, documenting progress over time.

The Scorecard shows that Australian women disproportionately have lower income, less engagement in the labour force and poorer health than men.  While economic indicators are improving for women, data shows that the gender gap has remained for all indicators (income, superannuation, labour force engagement and health) except unemployment.  At these rates it will take 70 years to reach equality on full time employment, and more than 200 years to reach equity on income.

These gender inequities are negatively affecting the economy as well. The report shows that women’s labour force absence cost $72 billion in lost GDP annually.