Embedding gender equity in government engagement

Now is the time to consider how gender equity fits into your government engagement strategy and here are some points to consider. 

Women’s justice and equity continues to be one of the most important issues we face as a country. Labor’s winning 2022 federal election platform enshrined equality for women as a key policy priority for their party and many would rightly read their win as a collective agreement that it is time to face this issue. 

When we look at the makeup of not-for-profits, charities and businesses-for-purpose, it’s clear that this is one of the only sectors where women lead the way. The 2020 ICDA governance roadmap survey showed that (of people working in this sector) around 70 per cent of respondents were women, and that 60 per cent of senior leadership and board members who responded to the survey identified as women.  

The not-for-profit sector is already leading the way on women’s equality, and now is the perfect time to work with the government to enact lasting and systemic change across the board. 

For many of you, gender equality is your core business, for others, consciously or not the work you do has an impact on gender equality. Regardless of the work your organisation does, there are changes to the way that the Albanese government is approaching and tackling the issues of gender equality, both overtly, and subtly, that create opportunity for your organisations. 

Federally, the dynamic has changed. We have moved beyond announcements and onto focused structural changes which will hopefully lead to real movement on key gender equality markers. The strongest indication of this shift has been the pairing of the finance and women portfolios under the one senior cabinet minister in Senator Katy Gallagher.

We are already seeing the government focus on legislation that it hopes will bring about systemic changes to ensure economic and social equality, to date these have focused largely on industrial tools and include:

• Ensuring that organisations with 100 employers or more will be required to report their gender pay gap, with the introduction of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment Bill 
• Removing pay secrecy clauses from employment contracts is a further increase to transparency – which is known to reduce the gender pay gap
• Implementing 10 paid domestic and family violence leave days
• Placing positive duty on employers to prevent workplace sexual harassment, discrimination and victimisation as recommended by the Respect@Work report, and 
• Expanding the Paid Parental Leave scheme up to 26 weeks  

While the government is busily working its way through its legislative agenda, its policy and funding decisions are grounded in key strategies that go to the core of equality including the new National Plan to End Violence Against Women, and the pre-existing National Women’s Health Strategy. Going forward the government will be guided by the independent advice of the newly formed Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, and the promised overarching National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality.

The Albanese government’s own internal processes are themselves trying to identify and call out structural barriers to gender equality, like gender sensitive budgeting and the inclusion of gender analysis in cabinet submissions. These measures are shifting the culture within parliament and minister’s offices as well as departments and central agencies, allowing your organisation to have more frank and fearless discussions. 

So what does all this mean for your organisation and how you engage with government? Consider the following: 

• Understand key strategies and consider how your work helps the government to achieve outcomes laid out in these documents (like the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children) 
• Upskill your workforce to be able to identify barriers to participation and or unconscious bias in your programming and service provision design  
• Undertake a gender analysis of your ask, make sure to include in your submissions and applications 
• Engage in consultation. This is a great opportunity for your organisation to engage with parliamentarians and bureaucrats and be seen as trusted thought leaders in your space 
• Reach out to advisory and caucus groups like  the Women’s Economic Taskforce and the Labor Women’s Caucus. These are long-term relationships that can help you better understand the government’s priorities 
• Remember that women are not a single cohort. Your analysis needs to reflect this and identify multilayered barriers that many women in Australia experience  
• Speak your truth and the truth of those you advocate for. As mentioned above, women are the powerhouse of the not-for-profit sector and with over 50 per cent of the caucus made up of women and cabinet sitting at just over 40 per cent, we can shift the conversation by leaning into our lived experience in a way simply not possible under the former make up of the parliament. 
• If you have been sitting on a project or policy change that will tackle the discrimination and marginalisation of women, now is the time to start working out your government engagement strategy.

While International Women’s Day (IWD) has been the catalyst for our thinking on these changes to how we speak with government on gender equality, the need to embed this into your government engagement strategy goes beyond just one day in the calendar. It can and should be a central pillar of your strategy going forward. 

There is a marked shift in our own feelings towards IWD this year than those more recently and it feels a little something like hope; hope we have governments across Australia that are stepping up and not shying away from the enormous challenges that lay before us all to bring about gender equality.