A new light is shining on the contribution of women working in the health, aged-care, school and early childhood sectors and their contribution is being recognised and celebrated as never before.

However, despite this shift in public awareness, advocates for gender equality in the workplace fear that the progress that has been made around workplace culture may take a backward step when business reopens in a post-pandemic Australia.

Our Watch chief executive Patty Kinnersly is concerned that some rigid stereotypes relating to the role of women will be reimposed as the nation begins the tentative process of returning to a regular work environment.

"Australians have worked effectively with government to flatten the Covid-19 curve, but we must be careful not to unintentionally reverse decades of progress towards gender equality," Ms Kinnersly said.

"Governments, workplaces, institutions and our communities must remain committed to this goal."

"We have found that crises of this kind disproportionately affect women.

"There are something like 950,000 casual workers who aren't eligible for JobKeeper allowances and the majority of those are women, so they have not only lost economic empowerment, but as a society we may be reverting to older thinking around a women's role.

"As children have needed home schooling, as older Australians have needed care, it's predominantly women who have stepped out of the workforce to undertake these roles."

Professor Rae Cooper from the University of Sydney said the pandemic was having a particularly gendered effect on the labour market.

"We have to recognise that there has been a massive impact on the types of jobs in which women form the majority of workers," Prof Cooper said.

"We know those workers who are in casual, contingent and precarious jobs, the majority of whom are women, were the first people who were hit by layoffs and job losses."

Prof Cooper said that when reopening workplaces, there is a danger in seeing gender equality as a luxury.

"Applying a gendered lens across the sectors in which people are working is going to be really critical for us," she said.

"We need to design ways in which we can look at gender equality as a part of the recovery from COVID-19.

"We need to ensure that what we are doing when we reopen is not go backwards."

Un/employment advocate at impressability.com.au, Zoë Wundenberg believes that there is hope for a possible upside to the pandemic for women in the workplace.

"One of the biggest issues we have with gender equity is the perception of the roles that women are filling," Ms Wundenberg said.

"I think this pandemic has changed the ways we see people in these roles.

"We are certainly valuing teachers, health and aged-care workers more.

"I've never seen so much outrage on behalf of teachers when they weren't shutting down the schools.

"Hopefully something positive can come out of this is improvement in the increased societal value of these roles, and perhaps, what will come with that, is increased respect for women in the workplace."

Ms Kinnersly pointed out that all the evidence confirmed that gender diversity provides organisations with a better culture, a more healthy environment and better financial outcomes.

"As we begin the process of rebuilding, putting staff back on, who are the people making the decisions about who is going to be employed," she said.

"Are they asking how the pandemic and job layoffs impact on women?

"We've worked really hard to get more women on boards and more women in senior executive positions.

"But if decision makers are not looking through a gendered lens then we will repeat the mistakes of the past.

"There is an opportunity here. There will be a lot of restructuring.

"Is there an opportunity to say 'what sort of organisation do I want to build?'"