All Australian high school students will be taught about coercion in sexual relationships and teenagers will rehearse how to seek, give and deny consent under a new national health curriculum that has the support of the country’s education ministers.

The increasing gap was driven mainly by a rapid rise in men’s pay, at 1.8 per cent, while women’s increased 0.9 per cent. This was the second time since 2014 men’s earnings had rapidly outpaced women’s and the change emerged in the early months of the year when the economy was rapidly recovering before the latest lockdowns.

“There has been a massive shift. Women are making it happen. They’re not being silent anymore. They’re confident and informed and supporting each other. Once one woman speaks out, somebody else gets the courage and it builds up. It’s been a long time coming.”

“What we’ve created is just an environment where kids can be comfortable wearing the uniform without there being any judgement around gender.”

Feminism, once deemed a dirty word by the mainstream, has since been co-opted by the corporate world and given rise to a series of slogans printed on sweatshirts and seen in Instagram hashtags – all in the name of “leaning in” and being a “girl boss”.

“Unfortunately, I’ve got the stories and I like to not dwell on them. I’ve not gotten jobs blatantly ... people have said ‘but she’s a female’. To me, I don’t understand what the difference is.”

Researchers conducted an experiment where they showed participants five paintings by women and five paintings by men. Nothing high end, nothing too famous. Participants were asked to guess the gender of the artist just by looking at a painting. No names, no provenance. Participants couldn't. As the researchers concluded: "Women's art appears to sell for less because it is made by women."

Men are suffering a bigger blow than women to their job prospects as the pandemic imposes sweeping layoffs nationwide, sparking a rethink about the “pink recession” seen in the first phase of the crisis.

Only one woman was promoted to the role of chief executive out of 25 appointments at Australia’s largest companies over the past year, in a sign gender equality in the professional world is going backwards.

In late July, an investigation by an Australian newspaper revealed that anyone who attempted to report a sexual crime between February 2016 and March 2018 via an email listed on the Western Australia Police website were sending highly sensitive reports to a ghost address not monitored by police. Worse, potentially thousands of highly sensitive emails were deleted as soon as they were sent to police for at least two years - if not more.

"As we emerge from hibernation, if we can resist the urge to sweep away the changes brought by COVID-19 that have heralded greater flexibility and reduced costs of working for women, we can bring the possibility of equity into a reality not for our distant descendants, but for our daughters."