New data from the Financy Women's Index has shown slow progress is being made towards gender financial equality in the March quarter.
Financy Women’s Index is a quarterly measurement of the economic progress of women and timeframes to gender financial equality in Australia.
The March 2026 findings, for which Adelaide University’s Centre for Workplace Excellence provided data support, showed the gap between men and women closed slightly, but only back to figures last seen in March 2025. The gap remains wider than in March 2024.
"This should serve as a timely reminder that incremental progress should not be interpreted as lasting change," Adelaide University Associate Professor Xin Deng said.
Bradley Distinguished Professor Carol Kulik agrees, noting that organisations often fail to maintain their early progress toward gender equality.
“Employers don’t want to be the only company with no women on their board or have the largest gender pay gap in their sector, but their motivation often declines once they are able to hide in the herd," she said.
"So, at a national level, gender equality keeps plateauing.”
The index provides a snapshot on equality across education, superannuation, underemployment, unpaid work, ASX 200 boards, gender pay gap and employment.
Numbers in the superannuation and employment sub-indexes made small improvements, while the underemployment sub-index gained 2.9 points.
Overall, the timeframe to financial gender equality in Australia remains largely unchanged at 20 years.
"The shortest timeframe to equality remains in the ASX 200 boards, where parity is predicted in 4.6 years," Professor Deng said.
"While the gap in underemployment parity has lengthened to 23.5 years (from 22.6), and Employment remains steady at 24.3 years.
"Superannuation, by contrast, sits much closer at 13.3 years, narrowing slightly from 13.4.
"The most profound challenges remain rooted in deep-seated societal norms.
"The projection for Unpaid Work has lengthened to 48.7 years (from 48.0), reflecting how slowly domestic and care work is being shared more evenly, while the most significant barrier by far remains Education at 212.5 years."