The Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia:A Closer Look at Gender Gaps in Employment, Earnings and Education

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, this article considers the longer-lasting economic impacts on the Australian workforce through a gender lens. Using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, it analyses changes in employment, earnings and educational participation relative to the pre-pandemic trends that were predicted to have otherwise occurred. Despite women's employment moving back towards pre-pandemic levels more rapidly than men's, the pandemic also saw a widening of the gender gap in earnings and a larger fall in women's educational participation. This paper highlights the need for ongoing monitoring of labour market indicators through a gender lens to inform more responsive policy design.</p

Lifting Diversity and Inclusion in Economics:How the Australian Women in Economics Network Put the Evidence into Action*

To support broader global efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in economics, this paper provides a statistical picture of the gender composition of the economics profession in Australia and the evidence-based initiatives taken by the Women in Economics Network (WEN) to improve women's representation and recognition. WEN's impact is evaluated across a range of metrics. This includes a case study of WEN's mentorship programme for university students that was delivered as a behavioural intervention and evaluated as a randomised control trial. Drawing on practical experiences in combination with research insights, the paper identifies some of the challenges encountered and the lessons that can be shared with similar organisations globally that are pursuing diversity and inclusion goals.</p

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta

Search for Spatial Correlations of Neutrinos with Ultra-high-energy Cosmic Rays

For several decades, the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) has been an unsolved question of high-energy astrophysics. One approach for solving this puzzle is to correlate UHECRs with high-energy neutrinos, since neutrinos are a direct probe of hadronic interactions of cosmic rays and are not deflected by magnetic fields. In this paper, we present three different approaches for correlating the arrival directions of neutrinos with the arrival directions of UHECRs. The neutrino data are provided by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and ANTARES, while the UHECR data with energies above ∼50 EeV are provided by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array. All experiments provide increased statistics and improved reconstructions with respect to our previous results reported in 2015. The first analysis uses a high-statistics neutrino sample optimized for point-source searches to search for excesses of neutrino clustering in the vicinity of UHECR directions. The second analysis searches for an excess of UHECRs in the direction of the highest-energy neutrinos. The third analysis searches for an excess of pairs of UHECRs and highest-energy neutrinos on different angular scales. None of the analyses have found a significant excess, and previously reported overfluctuations are reduced in significance. Based on these results, we further constrain the neutrino flux spatially correlated with UHECRs

Leaning in: Is higher confidence the key to women’s career advancement?

Women’s lack of confidence is commonly regarded as a key reason why women lagbehind men’s career outcomes. This paper interrogates this claim by examiningthe empirical link between an individual’s confidence and job promotion prospectsthrough a gender lens. We use nationally-representative data for 7533 individualscollected in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA)Survey in 2013. Confidence is captured by a psychometric survey instrument,Achievement Motivation, which is dually comprised of ‘hope for success’ and ‘fear offailure’. Using Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we detect that higher hope for successis linked to a higher likelihood of job promotion, but only amongst men. This findingprovides no evidence to support the widespread advice commonly given to womenthat they need to ‘lean in’ and show more confidence as the mechanism to closegender gaps in the workplace

Economics and gender equality: A lens from within

This paper considers three aspects in which the issue of gender inequalities arises and is treated within the field of economics. First, I consider the premises on which gender inequality and discrimination have been conceptualized in traditional economic frameworks. Second, I consider how contemporary policy discourse—the “business case” for gender equality—might be reconciled with conventional economic models. Third, turning to the economics profession, I consider how the ways economists navigate gender equality might apply to the profession itself

‘Does maternity leave encourage higher birth rates? An analysis of the Australian labour force’

This paper uses data from the 2003 HILDA Survey to assess the impact of maternityleave on the incidence of pregnancy among Australian women. The empirical analysisaccounts for the fact that data on maternity leave is unobserved for non-working womenand applies a Heckprobit selection model to control for potential sample selectionbias. The analysis finds that the availability of maternity leave can significantly elevatepregnancy rates but this effect depends on a woman’s age and whether maternity leaveis paid or unpaid. The findings imply that the implementation of national paid maternityleave legislation in Australia would work to encourage women to bring forward thetiming of childbirths and help ease the economic pressures of the ageing populatio

'...And one for the country' the effect of the baby bonus on Australian women's childbearing intentions

In 2004, at a time when the nation was experiencing the lowest fertility trends in its history, the Australian Federal Government introduced the offer of a cash payment of $3,000 to all women on the birth of a new baby. The maternity payment, commonly known as the baby bonus, was increased to$4,000 in 2006 and to $5,000 in 2008. While not explicitly declared a pronatalist policy at the time of its introduction, the baby bonus was later credited with helping to halt the decline of the nation's aggregate birth rates. This paper examines the effect of this policy on Australian women's childbearing intentions from 2001 to 2008, using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics (HILDA) Survey. The results indicate that the introduction of the baby bonus coincided with a statistically significant increase in women's childbearing intentions. More specifically, the strongest increase occurred among women from lower-income households, potentially implying that the policy had the strongest effect on women who, given their current characteristics, are relatively likely to be reliant on welfare assistance to raise their children over the long term. The inferences drawn from the paper's findings raise concern over the capacity of the baby bonus policy to reduce aggregate dependency rates