Gender inequality is a dimension of economic inequality in Australia that warrants special attention. Despite changing social attitudes and public policies over the last four decades, economic inequality between women and men remains a significant concern. At the highest levels in business and within the most prestigious professions, men continue to dominate. A report showing the highest-paid executive officers in the top 150 Australian corporations, for example, with ‘power salaries’ ranging between $200000 and $28.6 million per year, had just three women on the list, the highest paid of whom earned an annual $1.5 million (Sydney Morning Herald 2003). While women make up 44.8 per cent of the workforce, they make up only 3 per cent of CEOs and 8.7 per cent of the directors of Australia's top 200 listed companies (EOWA 2006: 5). Of the 200 wealthiest Australians in 2006, only 11 (or 5.5 per cent) were women (Business Review Weekly 2006a).

A similar pattern recurs outside the corporate world, although less striking. In Federal Parliament only 64 of the 226 members are women (Commonwealth of Australia 2006). Similarly, although many women enter prestigious and highly paid professions such as medicine and law, they tend to occupy the lower ranks within them. There are, for example, only six women among the forty-six judges serving on the Federal Court of Australia: male judges in this court still outnumber female judges by a ratio of over seven to one (Federal Court of Australia 2006).