'It's a battle': Local women forced to cut back on work amidst childcare shortage

"When we looked at everything before we moved, childcare was something we forgot to consider. I have my own business which I'm trying to get off the ground here in Dubbo while battling childcare," she said.

"I called the centres that were closest to my house and I went for a couple of tours - but they said they didn't have space and put me on the waitlist. I wasn't working at the time so I thought I'd be patient - then I thought I really need to start getting back to work."

After calling almost every childcare centre in town, Ms Woodward "got lucky" and was able to secure a spot for her 3-year-old son three days a week. With no family support in the area and her husband working full-time, she says she doesn't have a "backup plan".

"Child care's a battle. It's just a big mess, where do you begin to fix the problem," she said.

With childcare centres across Dubbo reporting waitlists of over a year and staffing issues causing some centres to operate below capacity and close for days at a time - new mums who want to get back to work are struggling.

Cost is another issue - Gilgandra woman Carissa Boulden said she would love to return to work if she found a childcare spot for her two-year-old son for three days a week but even then, the price would make it prohibitive for her and her husband.

"Working the costs of care, and our other bills I'll be out more money than I'd be making so I am a stay at home mum on partnered payments from Centrelink and we just make do. My partner works full time and studies part time so what we do get, we budget it," she said.

One Dubbo mum, who recently returned to work after finding a childcare spot for her youngest child, said she's paying $940 a fortnight in fees; "it's definitely not cheap".

The shortage of childcare has bigger picture impacts when it comes to gender equality.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) names lack of workplace flexibility to accommodate child care, women's greater time out of the workforce caring for kids impacting career progression and women's disproportionate share of unpaid domestic work as key drivers of the gender wage gap.

According to data from the 2021 Census, 27.6 percent of people in the Dubbo region provided unpaid care during the two weeks before census night - slightly higher than the state total of 25.3 percent.

Of those who provided unpaid childcare, 41 percent were male and 59 percent were female. Women between the ages of 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 were the two largest groups providing unpaid childcare.

In Australia, women spend 64.4 percent of their average weekly working time on unpaid care work compared to 36.1 percent for men.

Dr Evgenia Dechter, a senior lecturer at UNSW Business School whose speciality is in labour economics, agrees. She said another way inaccessible child care contributes to the wage gap by pushing women who would otherwise work full time into part time or casual work.

"A constrained choice to accept a part-time job affects not only the immediate quality of life but also prevents individuals from accumulating work experience, acquiring skills and being competitive in the labour market in later years," she said.

"Moreover, part-time jobs are more likely to be casual jobs with limited access to benefits that a full-time job provides. As a result, we have relatively fewer women in high paying jobs, imposing further imbalances and unfavourable gender dynamics in the labour market."

But the impact is cyclical, said Dr Dechter, with the wage gap meaning for many families it is "cheaper for women than for men to reduce working hours to care for children".

"Further reforms in the childcare system to provide affordable services to employed individuals are needed to break this cycle. Not only childcare for children under school age but also aftercare services for school-aged children," she said.

But some families are sharing the load. Local mum Laura Archer has opted against putting her five-month old son into childcare - she said her husband having access to three-months paid parental leave took away some of the stress of finding care right away.

"It's been fantastic - he was the first to ask for it in his profession so the people he was applying for leave from didn't even know it existed. He pushed through and is looking forward to it," she said.

"It means it's not all on one parent taking time out of their career and all of that. We're really lucky there's a bit more of a move towards the other parent being involved and some employers recognising that."