Australian women are chalking up some wins in the workplace – yet our male leaders remain out of touch

‘A vast proportion of women don’t even try to work in offices once their children come along,’ writes Emma Dawson, the executive director of thinktank Per Capita. Photograph: Tom Werner/Getty Images

This International Women’s Day, ladies, put out your cupcakes for the 9-to-5 white collar working week. Recent changes to Australia’s industrial relations laws and public sector bargaining agreements suggest we just might be achieving some real progress towards more gender-equal workplace structures – and the blokes who have run the economy for the last 150 years are having a collective fit of the vapours.

First came the “right to disconnect” legislation as part of the government’s agreement with the Greens to pass the closing loopholes bill. This, according to the business lobby, will “kill” workplace flexibility. Apparently, if workers don’t want to answer their telephones or respond to emails when they are having dinner with their families or reading bedtime stories, they can forget about going to the dentist or picking the kids up from school, because “flexibility cuts both ways”.