With Treasurer Jim Chalmers in the United States for meetings, and it being just two weeks out from the first Albanese government budget, the highly regarded ACT senator is now currently Australia's acting Treasurer. She follows Fraser government minister Dame Margaret Guilfoyle also briefly stepped into the portfolio more than 40 years ago.

While Australia has had a female prime minister in Julia Gillard, it has never had a woman as a full-time treasurer.

Dr Sonia Palmieri, a gender policy fellow at the Australian National University, has told The Canberra Times that economic political roles have traditionally been seen as male portfolios.

"I think it's important that we recognise that this hasn't happened for a really long time. And that the last time was also an acting position," she said.

"And so it continues to instill in Australian political culture the idea that the treasurer is still a position of political power that women haven't cracked yet."

"I just don't think that we've cracked the glass ceiling. I think that's the message I would like to relay."

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The ACT senator is a key member of the government's razor gang, the expenditure review committee, and holds the portfolios of finance, public service and women.

"That trifecta alone has never happened for a woman before. And she has so much power to instill new processes," Dr Palmieri said.

"Adding the nod to the Treasury for four days also tells us that the government really does value her. [It] suggests that the government takes her capacity, her credibility, her kind of legitimacy in all of those roles very seriously and that's really important."

"We can't underestimate the political powerhouse that Katy Gallagher is."

Only two women have been assistant treasurers over the years: senior Liberals Kelly O'Dwyer and Helen Coonan.

Dr Palmieri has decried how the major political parties allocate portfolios and she suggests there are many more opportunities for the parliament to demonstrate its commitment to women in leadership, across both houses in economic portfolios.

"Even 10 years after Julia Gillard, more than 10 years, we haven't had another female prime minister," she said.

"We haven't had a female deputy prime minister for a long time. And that's partly because of the structure of the Coalition government, and that would require National Party members to give us a female lead.

"But we haven't seen women in the really top positions as substantive, kind of ministers in those roles.

"It's just that those really top senior positions of leadership continue to go to men."

Ahead of his first budget on October 25, Dr Chalmers is in Washington DC for a meeting of G20 finance ministers. He is expected to meet Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and World Bank president David Malpass.