Data shows women are bearing the brunt of job losses and the pandemic is affecting their superannuation.

Stepping out of work or reducing work hours to care for children at home or be the primary support during homeschooling is having an impact on women's future career pathways.

Women are also playing an important role on the front-line of the pandemic, with many working in essential services like healthcare, aged care and supermarkets.

Women's Health Grampians is advocating to government to consider the impact on women in its decision making and to apply a gendered lens to policy strategies.

"Women are bearing the brunt of job losses and experiencing unemployment in really high numbers. The challenge with that is we weren't starting from an equal basis anyway," chief executive Marianne Hendron said.

"We were very much on a journey of trying to achieve structural change in the workforce and in our economic systems to work towards things like wage parity and a more equal division of labor in terms of supporting families.

"We had a number of strategies and measures in place to try and achieve a level playing field before all this started and the concern or the risk is this is going to take us back even further."

There has been a 7.1 per cent decline in the number of Victorian women in jobs since March 2020, as measured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics collection of weekly payroll data.

In July, the rate of female job loss was almost five times the rate for men - and that was before the second lockdown began.

ABS monthly labour force data shows we now have the highest number of Victoria women who are unemployed, ever.

READ MORE: Data reveals toll of COVID-19 on women

Ms Hendron said both the state and federal government must take into account the particular challenges for women in their emergency response and long term reforms.

"We are calling for government to think about the economic and social recovery from COVID in gendered terms and taking account of those different impacts according to gender," she said.

Ms Hendron said Women's Health Grampians advocated to the government for the free childcare arrangement that was put in place as an early response.

She said it was important lower income families were supported into the future to access childcare to reduce the barrier to entry for women seeking employment.

Ms Hendron provided the government's construction-led recovery as an example of a strategy that should have a gendered lens applied.

"That is one strategy, but how will a construction-led recovery directly benefit women given the low numbers of women who are employed by that sector and will the government include strategies to ensure that sector employs more women?," she said.

"It is not saying we shouldn't have a construction led recovery, it is seeing how that is going to benefit women who have been impacted here."

READ MORE: Women's jobs hit hardest by COVID-19

Ms Hendron said she would also like to see a continued focus on pre-COVID strategies including reform for flexible workplaces, family leave to encourage equal parenting and wage parity.

Ms Hendron said Women's Health Grampians would continue to be a part of the Victorian Gender Equality Strategy moving forward.

The organisation will also focus on women's mental health, with a particular focus on young women, and family violence support.

"It is worth acknowledging on the positive side there are reports of a lot more sharing of the household duties between partners while everyone has been at home," Ms Hendron said.

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