The Role of Women in the Australian Labour Market: A Survey of the Literature

Abstract

This article surveys the Australian literature on the labour market involvement of women. The increasing prominence of women in the workforce has generated a research effort designed to investigate various aspects of women's employment, unemployment, work experience and earnings. Recently there has been an upsurge of interest in women's issues which has prompted an intensification of research into the role of women in the labour market. However, there remain a number of impor tant gaps in our understanding of that role, notably with regard to the workforce behaviour of women, the factors influencing the maintenance of occupational segregation of the sexes, and the significance and nature of discrimination in depressing the relative earnings of women.