Three challenging trends and the opportunities they present for Australian women
Three challenging trends – demographics, technology, and expectations of government – present opportunities for Australian women. How might the federal budget support them?
Thanks to the Women in Economics Network for the opportunity to speak to you today and share the stage with such accomplished professional colleagues. I am grateful for the important work WEN does. Economics is a science of human behaviour. Our endowments, our priorities and – in some circumstances – our physiology can all matter for our choices and our economic outcomes. If economics does not incorporate those diverse perspectives, it loses the ability to explain human behaviour. A profession that is more balanced across both sexes is critical to getting that diversity of perspectives.
With so much going on in the world, it is all too easy to fixate on immediate problems, ignoring the longer-term issues – and opportunities. Today I want step back and talk about those longer-term trends. I will:
outline three big trends shaping current and future outcomes
highlight the opportunities these trends present for Australian women – not just the downsides
suggest some ways that the federal budget, and government more broadly, might promote those opportunities, rather than focus only on the downsides.
These three trends are:
The ageing population
The AI technology revolution – and it is a revolution
Rising expectations of government – perceived or real
Ageing population, growing workforce
Many in the room will be under the impression that population ageing means a shrinking workforce. I am here to tell you that this is not true. Work with my Westpac colleague Ryan Wells back in September shows that in most Western economies, the labour force participation rate is in fact rising. In Australia it is on a five-decade up-trend, reaching historical highs in recent years.
Yes, the share of older people in the population is increasing. Population ageing happens because we are living longer, healthier lives. People will make different choices when lifespans lengthen. They will work for longer and retire later. Part of this stems from policy changes, such as higher pension eligibility ages. But much of it is the choices people make, knowing that they would otherwise need to fund very long retirements, and knowing that they do not need to retire early due to ill-health in the same numbers as previous generations did. Thus participation rates within age groups rise, especially the 55–64 age group. This can be (and for Australia, so far is) enough to offset the rising share of older people.
The reason for this counter-intuitive result is an example of first-round thinking not being enough. We need to account for people’s responses changing as circumstances change. Just as Toyota taught us to ask “why” five times to get to the root cause, we must ask, “and then what?” five times to understand how a longer-term trend will play out. Changes in age mix do not happen in isolation. The “and then what” is that participation rates within age groups rise and can more than offset an ageing population mix.
I suspect that people also missed this trend because it is not happening in the United States. US life expectancy has not really increased in the past couple of decades; premature death is much higher than in peers such as Australia and Europe. And so participation of the 55–64 age group, and even the prime-age 25–54 group, in the US lags other advanced economies. The gap is now such that overall participation in Japan is noticeably higher than in the US, despite Japan’s population being much older on average.
How this is an opportunity for Australian women
Population ageing does present opportunities for women. First, some of the increase in overall participation stems from still-rising participation by women in the 25–54 age group, not just from older workers. There will always be some jobs – say, furniture removal – where male upper body strength will remain an advantage. As the workforce changes, though, job design will need to evolve to fit those changes, and the changes driven by an ageing workforce and a more female workforce are likely similar.
In addition, as lifespans and working lives lengthen, career breaks for family reasons become less of a setback in the accumulation of retirement savings. Since women are more likely to take such breaks than men, this eases a current disadvantage.
How the federal budget might support this
If government wants to realise the opportunities created by an ageing population and an expanding workforce that is older and more female, it should do everything it can to smooth the path for women to enter the workforce, re-enter the workforce after a break, and stay in the workforce as long as they feel able.
Getting the NDIS on a sustainable footing and back to its core purposes of supporting the severely disabled and reducing family members’ caring burden is a singular example of what is needed. The “sandwich generation” task of caring for children and elderly parents simultaneously is a disproportionately borne by women. Well-funded support in schools, with support and training for teachers and parents alike, may support some families with children currently on the NDIS better than a system that creates more life admin by funding appointments with service providers, which parents need to attend with their children.
More broadly, designing every program with the principle of reducing life admin for families should be a red thread through all federal and state initiatives.
Tax and retirement policy could be reshaped to ensure women who took career breaks are not held back by cliff effects and complexity from accumulating the needed retirement savings.
I note also that much of Australia’s economic policy apparatus has been built on the false assumption that ageing results in a shrinking workforce. Separately, therefore, budgets, the Intergenerational Review and other policies should be revisited so forecasts and program design can be based on actual trends, not first-round thinking.
AI and the new technology wave
Turning to the AI revolution – I use that word intentionally. The scope and capability of this new general-purpose technology have expanded enormously, with a pace that defies belief. Anything you thought about this technology based on what you knew six months ago is obsolete. There is a lot we do not know about how this will play out. Still, we can think through some implications, again beyond the first round of responses.
How this is an opportunity for Australian women
I see three opportunities from the AI revolution that might specifically benefit women. Firstly, with everything being so new and moving so quickly that almost nobody knows anything, it is easier to step into a field, or back into the workforce after a pause. Seismic breaks in the landscape of work mean past career breaks in a CV should be less of a disadvantage.
Secondly, AI might weaken the hold of what Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin termed “greedy jobs”, those where long, continual hours are expected and frenetic pace early on builds experience and skills that allow career progression later. If agents can instead carry the context and assist with some tasks, “always on” continuity becomes less of an imperative. The jobs may become greedier of cognitive skills and the ability to orchestrate all those agents. Relative to careers that demand sheer “presence” and long, frenetic hours early in your career, though, this should help level the playing field between the two sexes, provided institutional norms also change. (I recognise this is a critical assumption.)
Thirdly, granted there is still much uncertainty and debate about which jobs will remain in demand and which will be less prevalent as this technology percolates. There is, however, good reason to believe that those least prone to full automation include those in-person, so-called ‘caring’ occupations that have provided so many job opportunities for women.
I note also that Australia is well-placed more broadly to take advantage of this new technology. Contrary to the stereotype of Australia being mostly about resources and financial services, this country has a burgeoning software industry that is already taking advantage of the newest tools. Coming from almost nothing a decade ago, Australia now boasts a software licensing export industry that brought in $9½ billion of export revenue in 2025. For perspective, this is bigger than aluminium or copper, and almost as big as last year’s wheat exports.
I would also note that concerns about unequal returns to the AI boom are less relevant in Australia. Even if all the profits accrue to a few tech firms – a debatable proposition – almost all Australians will have exposure to this upside through their superannuation funds.
How the federal budget might support this
Of course, there was no government program or special initiative to create a software export industry. And this points to what the budget, and government, can and should do in this space – don’t get in the way of the good bits or think that it is the government’s role to lead and guide in every realm of endeavour.
There are of course privacy, child protection and national security angles to AI tools that warrant intervention and an appropriate regulatory framework. Just don’t get in the way of allowing women to lean into this future.
I note reports of government concern that AI might fuel work intensification, which would be creating “greedy jobs” by other means. Before rushing to regulate in this sphere, though, we should check that intensification is a material issue. There is reason to think the opposite might end up being true. As agents become more reliable partners to hand off work to, human cognitive contribution becomes both more important and less time-bound. Just as the assumption that population ageing would shrink the workforce turned out to be wrong, so might the idea that AI necessarily intensifies work beyond an initial period of experimentation.
Growing perception that people expect more of government
The third big trend I want to address today might or might not be real, but it is certainly a growing perception in policy circles: that people expect more of government nowadays, and that governments should therefore deliver on those expectations. We see a rising call for government support in more circumstances. The rapid growth in scope and cost of the NDIS is the canonical example in a traditional area for government involvement. Expanding industry policy shows how the scope of policy can broaden as well as deepen.
Regulation and governance now touch an increasing set of activities, and the nature of that regulation is expanding. Whether it is the number of agencies firms need to seek approval from to build something, or the number of pages in the Income Tax Assessment Act (just one of current 12 volumes has a similar page count to the 1997 version), I am reminded of that well-known feminist philosopher Avril Lavigne’s lyric, “why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?” The answer is, of course, that there was always one more thing that someone with the best of intent thought should be added.
The consequences of this belief about public expectations are evident in the rising share of household income being paid in income tax, rising regulatory footprint, and, as with some of the public programs I have already mentioned, a rising life admin burden that falls disproportionately on women.
I also worry that decisions to intervene shape decisions in ways that harm future resilience. If every adverse event is met with a government intervention to cushion the blow, a kind of “learned helplessness” can emerge, for firms and industries as well as individuals.
How this is an opportunity for Australian women
The consequences of this belief are not all bad, though. An area where the footprint of government has expanded to the benefit of women has been greater scope of crisis payments, especially for women and children escaping domestic and family violence. To the extent that this means more women can escape violence in the first place, it is surely a good outcome.
In addition, as I noted earlier, the expansion of the “care economy” and the regulatory footprint more broadly has been positive for women’s employment. Especially in a relatively sex-segregated occupational job market like Australia’s, health, education and social care roles are disproportionately female-coded. Using the industry of a person’s main job to categorise, women and girls make up 48% of total employment, but more than 70% of employment in health, social care and their sub-industries. Public administration and financial services also have above-average female employment shares.
How the federal budget might address this
Still, it would be good if these benefits could be reaped without all the admin, the complexity and the cost of our current system. If there is one thing I would hope for from this and future budgets, it is to take Ms Lavigne’s words to heart and make things less complicated.
Every intervention deserves scrutiny on this front. Without advocating specific changes, I instead offer the principle that governments should hesitate and ideally refrain from policies and programs where the answer to any of the following questions is “yes”.
Does the intervention take away choice?
Does the intervention promote learned helplessness?
Has the support been overcomplicated?
Does the intervention involve re-litigation of a safety standard or an evidence base that has already been established elsewhere?
On the last of these, the axiom I have in mind is “if it is safe enough for Europeans, it should be safe enough for Australians”. There are some exceptions, such as the need to build differently in a bushfire-prone continent. But from car booster seats to bike helmet laws for adults, Australia has shown a consistent tendency to go further on perceived safety than its European counterparts. Similarly, if evidence reviews by the health authorities of enough peer European nations show that a particular medical intervention is ineffective, we do not need to redo the analysis on smaller Australian datasets to stop performing and funding that intervention here.
Conclusion
To sum up, it is an uncertain world, though nobody ever says things are less uncertain than usual. All the more reason to keep sight of the big trends that will shape our futures even when current volatility is past. The good news is that these trends present opportunities for Australian women, but only if we ensure that other priorities – real or perceived – do not prevent us from making use of these opportunities. Thank you.
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