For all the discussion the importance of early education for a child's development and in supporting other women to go back to work, these benefits come at the expense of an overworked, underpaid group of women.

On Wednesday, early childhood educators around the country will be closing the centre doors, not because they don't care about families and children, but because they can't carry on anymore.

Civic Early Childhood Centre assistant director Nazish Mustaq said young people and migrants were often attracted to study early childhood through government incentives, but they abandoned their studies after seeing the reality of the work in centres.

"This sector has actually always been undervalued in terms of wages, professional identity, but I think it's getting worse day by day, especially after the COVID pandemic," Mrs Mustaq said.

It's not unusual to be doing long days or forgo breaks to cover for sick and absent staff members. She's seen many workers leave the sector for jobs in supermarkets where they do not face the same level of strict regulations and training requirements.

The staff have discussed how their male partners don't value their employment because of the size of their pay packets.

"The females feel discriminated [against]. They said we can't even talk to our husbands and our partners, that if we get the same level of income or ... reduce the income gap that might be valued at our homes and that might be valued in other sectors as well."

At least a dozen childcare centres in the ACT will join the action on Wednesday, which the United Workers Union hopes will draw attention to the plight of their workers.

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Northside Community Service chief executive Anna Whitty said the current system has parents pitted against educators.

"The tension between obviously not wanting to increase fees for families to make it accessible so that all children can access early childhood education and also ensuring that educators are paid as they should be for really important, very difficult and complex work that they do on any given day is really tricky," Ms Whitty said.

Ms Whitty believes Australia needs to shift away from discussing early childhood education as a solution for women's workforce participation and towards it being an essential part of the education system.

"Your right to access an early childhood centre should not be dependent on your postcode or your parents' salary, but rather as a society, our view that education is a right and that early childhood education is right," she said.

"95 per cent of a human's brain develops in the first five years of their life and yet we're not positioning that front and centre in terms of policy and or funding."

In recent years the unions representing early childhood workers have tried to make the case to the Fair Work Commission that the award wages are discriminatory for a workforce of 97 per cent women, but these cases have fallen short.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the median weekly earnings of a full-time childcare employee with vocational qualifications was $1059 before tax in May last year.

The difference is stark when compared with male-dominated trades, such as bricklayers and stonemasons ($1401), concreters ($1725) or electricians ($2120).

It is also much lower than the average weekly pay for all job, which is $1593. Median rate for workers in childcare settings is $28 per hour, whereas the median rate for all jobs is $41 per hour.

Ms Whitty said she feels more optimistic that reforms can be made with more professional women in government since Labor swept to power alongside the teal independents.

"If you have empathy or even understand the situation, it does influence how you view things. I think I'm hopeful, I hope I see it in my lifetime."

Mrs Mustaq, who is a union delegate, has recently been in meetings with politicians to put forward the case for better pay and conditions across the entire industry. She thinks they are listening but there's more work to be done.

"We want fair wages. We want children before profit. We want better working conditions and we want to be identified as professionals not babysitters."

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