More women than men have been convicted in Australia for human trafficking and slavery and not one has had links to organised crime.

Since Australia introduced tough laws to crack down on trafficking a decade ago, nine schemes have been successfully prosecuted in Australia.

The Australian Institute of Criminology said that while middle-aged men were often assumed to be behind trafficking and slavery, eight of 15 people eventually convicted in Australia were women.

The report found the female offenders were all migrants, born in the same foreign country as their victims and typically from similar poor socio-economic backgrounds.

Most of the schemes involved slavery of Thai women in the sex industry, with the victims forced to pay debts of tens of thousands of dollars owed to offenders for organising their passage to Australia.