The Hidden Casualties of 'Progress'
Gender Inequity — The Hidden Casualties of “Progress”
They won the right to work. The system forgot to protect them.
The women who entered the workforce in the 1970s and 80s carried paid jobs and unpaid care, stepped into male-dominated roles, and absorbed decades of cumulative stress.
Today’s data makes the cost visible: psychological-injury claims have surged 161 per cent in a decade, now 12 per cent of all serious claims, with recovery times five times longer than for physical injuries. Women — especially in health, education, care, and public administration — bear a disproportionate share of this harm. (Safe Work Australia 2025)
Invisible Exclusion
Weekly workers’-compensation payments generally do not attract superannuation, because they’re excluded from “ordinary time earnings” under the Superannuation Guarantee law.
Some awards or enterprise agreements do extend super while on comp leave — but it’s patchy. Women, more likely to work part-time or have career breaks, lose the most. Every period of injury becomes another gap in retirement savings.
Cumulative Stress & Financial Exclusion
Interrupted employment, pay inequity, and unpaid care depress women’s lifetime earnings and super balances.
When injury hits late in a career, there’s little time to recover financially.
Older women are now one of the fastest-growing groups experiencing or at risk of homelessness (AIHW 2023; Mercy Foundation 2024).
This is not only economic failure — it is policy neglect made visible.
Thrown Off At 67
In NSW and most jurisdictions, weekly compensation stops one year after a worker reaches pension age (currently 67).
If injury occurs after that, payments last only 12 months, regardless of severity. (Most other states set similar limits.)
Women, forced to work longer because their super is smaller, are punished by a law still written for a 1950s male breadwinner. Medical costs may continue, but income support vanishes — leaving many one step from poverty.
A New Cohort Of Homelessness
Across Australia, outdated retirement-age laws meet an ageing, feminised workforce.
Women with broken careers and hollow super balances stay in the workforce out of necessity, often in care or service jobs where psychological injury is rife.
When they’re injured, the law cuts them off just as recovery begins.
In doing so, we are manufacturing a new cohort of homelessness — women already suffering, abandoned by a system blind to the changing nature of work.
This is not a design flaw; it is a moral one.
The iceberg illustration shows what lies below the surface driving violence against women. Credit: Our Watch.
Where Change Must Begin
Pay super on compensation
Amend Superannuation Guarantee law so weekly comp payments accrue super.
Make it universal in awards
Require modern awards and enterprise agreements to include compensation-super clauses.
Recover lost retirement savings
Clarify and strengthen common-law rights to damages for lost super in serious injury cases.
Measure what matters
Mandate gender-disaggregated claims reporting and fund independent analysis of gendered harm.
Put women at the table
Reform with lived-experience leadership — audits alone won’t fix a system built to miss women.
Disclaimer
The information on this page is general and based on publicly available national and state sources, including the Safe Work Australia 2025 Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Report, Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW), and comparative jurisdictional reviews.
Workers’ compensation provisions — especially for age limits, superannuation rules and duration of payments — vary between states and territories. Readers should seek independent legal or financial advice for their specific circumstances.
Credit: Image filming Ballina Gee
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