• The past decade has seen a slow transition of women into sectors traditionally dominated by men, analysis from Indeed shows.
• Now, experts suggest the pandemic has supercharged the trend, with the data also pointing to an acceleration of women both in work and looking for work.
• Skyrocketing property prices could also be behind the uptick, they say, as households stretch to meet soaring prices
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The pandemic could accelerate the shift of women into better paying jobs in male-dominated industries, new jobs data suggests.

Analysis from employment agency Indeed shows that even before the pandemic hit there had been a measurable shift of both men and women into fields where they had previously been underrepresented — with the trend set to continue into 2021.

Experts suggest the results, which also showed a jump in the number of women participating in the workforce overall, could be related to Australia’s hot property market as households scrabble for additional income to meet exploding costs.

Callam Pickering, chief economist at Indeed said that, since the pandemic hit in March of last year, the employment of women in traditionally-male fields had continued to outpace the hiring of men.

In the decade leading to 2020, the number of women employed as software and applications programmers was growing faster than the number of men, at 7.4% annually, the Indeed data showed.

The number of women entering civil engineering was also higher than the number of men entering the field, growing by 6.1% a year.

It also showed that the fields where the numbers of new female entrants were most quickly outpacing men were as bakers and pastry cooks, construction managers, and engineering managers at 12.5%, 12.8%, and 14.2% respectively.

Additionally, male employment grew faster than female employment in several sectors traditionally dominated by women, including aged and disability care, and education aides.

The new analysis comes amid Australia’s strong employment recovery which has resulted in the total number of people currently in work above pre-pandemic levels and an unemployment rate of 5.1%.

ABS data tracking the job market’s recovery in 2020 showed that while more women lost jobs at the start of the pandemic, the recovery had also been stronger for them.

In April 2020, women’s workforce participation decreased by 2.9% while men’s participation decreased by 1.9%.

However by August of 2020, 52% of the jobs held by women had been recovered, compared to 19% of the jobs held by men.

And by mid June of 2021, the number of women on the nation’s payroll registers was 1.8% higher than it was pre-pandemic, but the number of men was 0.2% down.

Further research from JPMorgan shows that in the past year there has been a “remarkable” acceleration in both the number of women in work and looking for work.

Ben Jarman and Tom Kennedy, economists at JP Morgan told the Sydney Morning Herald that while the reasons behind the uptick in female participation, one factor could be the explosion in house prices in the first six months of 2021.

The median house price in Sydney currently sits at $1.2 million, with prices also creeping toward $1 million in Melbourne and Canberra.

Australian property prices rose 13.5% nationally over the last financial year.

“The exact catalysts behind the most recent shift is unknown,” Jarman and Kennedy said, “though it likely relates to some combination of more flexible work arrangements, increasing opportunities and the rising hurdle to home ownership.”

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