Jobs and Skills Summit: Andrew Forrest labels women the great unsung giant of the nation’s labour force

Boosting the number of women in work has dominated the start of the Albanese Government’s Jobs and Skills Summit — with mining billionaire Andrew Forrest labelling females “the great unsung giant” of the nation’s labour force.

Arriving on the first morning of the summit in Canberra, Mr Forrest said he hoped the two-day event would seek to help “vulnerable populations” and increase female participation in the workforce.

“I think very strongly, we must have a greater female workforce,” the Fortescue Metals Group founder and executive chairman said.

“We’re making a major drive at Fortescue to increase women throughout our leadership and throughout our workforce, and I think women in our workforce is the great unsung giant, which we’re not using.

“I’d like to see overall co-operation of people to put down their minor interests and think in the value of our great nation.”

In the first addresses to the summit, Grattan Institute CEO Danielle Wood said one of the most important economic levers available to government to increase productivity and maintain full employment was increasing female participation in the workforce.

Ms Wood said Australia trailed just Japan and South Korea for the most gendered division of household labour, with women shouldering by far the bigger share of unpaid work – which led to a direct decline in weekly earnings.

She highlighted improving access to affordable childcare and overhauling paid parental leave to make it more generous to both men and women as “an important catalyst for change”.

Improving the pay and conditions of early childhood educators — a workforce facing “dire shortages” and overwhelmingly dominated by females – was another priority.

“As a society we do not baulk at billions being channelled into new roads to shave a few minutes off commute times,” Ms Wood said.

“Yet we have not made the necessary investments to ensure that some workers can make it to work at all.”

Toll Group Express CEO Christine Holgate said just 3 million out of 13 million women in Australia worked full-time as she called for changes to be made to the “crisis” to get more females into work.

“I personally would like us to change how we measure unemployment. Unemployment today includes part time workers,” Ms Holgate said.

“We complain that we don’t have enough super. We won’t have enough super for your generation if our generation don’t ensure we start addressing the underemployment crisis of women.

“This country needs to do a lot more to get women back to work. I want to see a real commitment to education and training for the future.’‘

Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott said there was “a great opportunity” to increase the economic growth in the country” if workplaces employed Australians with a disability.

“We need to lift our expectations of what people think we can do first and foremost,” he said.

“We’re ready to work. We deserve a choice if we want to work. But a lot of people with a disability don’t get given that opportunity because people think we can’t do it.

“In the 4.5 million people with a physical and non-physical disability, just 53 per cent of them perform work. Why is that? It’s because of unconscious bias, negative stigma and a lack of opportunities.”