This sounds great for working parents but the underlying reality is that these services are all pulling from a small pool of qualified educators - a pool that shows no sign of growing to meet demand.

According to Australian government labour market projections, the childhood education and care sector needs a 20 per cent increase in educators between 2019 and 2024 (about 30,000 people) to keep up with demand.

This is not a trivial number, especially in a heavily regulated sector that has minimum qualification requirements.

People working as early childhood educators, even at the entry level, must hold or be working towards Certificate III qualifications in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC).

At least half the educators in a service must hold a minimum Diploma qualification. There are also strict ratios of educators to children at all times during the day.

Without sufficient staff with the right qualifications, early childhood services must reduce their capacity. This is exactly what is happening in Canberra, and across Australia.

Between 2016 and 2019, enrolments in the Diploma of ECEC across Australia declined by more than one-third. We now have a massive shortfall in the early childhood workforce, with services scrambling to attract qualified staff. A recent search of the term "early childhood educator" on a leading recruitment website found 175 available jobs in Canberra alone.

Even offering above award wages and conditions, we have found it difficult to recruit quality staff to YWCA Canberra's early childhood services. This concerns us both as a service provider and as an organisation dedicated to increasing the rights and freedoms of women.

At YWCA Canberra, we have been offering early childhood education and care services since the 1970s, to help enable more local women to enter the workforce. The need for these services has only grown since then, with women now comprising 47.4 per cent of all employed people yet still undertaking the majority of caring duties.

Lack of access to early childhood services is a significant impediment for mothers in the workforce. In a 2018-19 ABS study, unemployed and underemployed people were asked why they weren't able to start a job or work more hours. Almost half of the women surveyed cited "caring for children" as a barrier; this was only a factor for 3.2 per cent of men.

When asked about what would incentivise people to return to the workplace or increase hours, the most common responses were related to childhood education and care. Half the women surveyed stated there should be greater access to childhood services and more financial assistance with the associated costs. This demonstrates the clear links between women's workforce equality and access to early childhood education and care. When a lack of staff limits spaces in early childhood services, it doesn't affect working parents equally; the impacts are disproportionately felt by women who are typically the second income earner in the family.

Some work is being done to increase the numbers of people entering early childhood careers, such as government grants programs and targeted supports. The Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority has recently developed a 10-year national workforce strategy. I was pleased to see that it included consideration of how to better recognise the professionalism of the early childhood sector, both in remuneration and in social standing, which I and many others have been calling for over several years.

At YWCA Canberra, we are dedicated to building a pipeline of qualified and confident ECEC professionals as part of our work to address gender inequality. But we are only one organisation. This needs to be a larger discussion across our community, in our workplaces, and in our governments.

The difficulties of achieving gender equality at work are well-known, but ensuring access to quality early childhood education and care is an essential part of the solution.