With 3 sector-wide audits spanning 5 years, the Commission now has the most comprehensive and intersectional public sector gender equality dataset in Australia. It provides longitudinal evidence on where progress is happening – and where it is stalling – across the public sector.
Providing longitudinal, sector-wide data
The Commission uses data from audits to publish sector-wide and industry-specific insights. Following compliance and data quality reviews, audit data is also published on the Commission’s Insights Portal.
Data on the Insights Portal allows members of the public to view gender equality data for individual organisations as well as industries in the public sector. Gender equality action plans and progress reports are also published on the Insights Portal. Together, these publicly accessible materials bring to life the transparency that underpins the ambitious objectives of the Gender Equality Act.
Improving data quality
Under the Gender Equality Act, duty holders have reported audit data in 2021, 2023 and 2025. Over this period, organisations have reported more data with fewer errors as the data collection has matured.
The Commission has refined its compliance standard and strengthened reporting requirements over time to improve the quality of data available for each workplace gender equality indicator.
Improved data quality supports better transparency and accountability across the public sector. It enables the Commission to perform and support more detailed investigations and research into the state of gender equality in Victoria’s public sector.
Funding research
The Commission’s multi-year research project, Setting, implementing and achieving gender equality targets(opens in a new window), progressed throughout the year. The research looks at how gender equality targets can work in the Victorian public sector. Led by Professor Michelle Ryan from the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at ANU, the project will be completed by December 2026. Early findings were published this year. The research identifies four key supports targets need to succeed: good data systems, intersectional thinking, strong leadership, and staff engagement and communication.
Research funded by the Commission through our Inaugural Research Grants Round was published in University of Western Australia Law Review. The article, Equality procurement: The next frontier of discrimination law?(opens in a new window), evaluated how public procurement could be used to advance social and economic equality.
Sharing leading practice through case studies
The Commission publishes case studies to share good practice examples from duty holders, so that other organisations can learn from real-life stories. In 2025-26 we published 8 new case studies(opens in a new window) sharing examples from diverse duty holders. Case studies focused on gender impact assessments and approaches to addressing a range of workplace gender equality indicators, from flexible work arrangements to workplace segregation.
Informing research and policy-making
Our work is widely used to inform research, policy-making and evidence-based practice.
Dr Vincent and Commission staff Dr Jessica Megarry and Dr Kate Farhall wrote an article published in the Australian Journal of Human Rights in January 2026: Living up to the promise: the Gender Equality Act as Beth Gaze’s legacy in action(opens in a new window). The article highlighted the transformative potential of the Gender Equality Act. It referred to Gaze’s critiques of anti-discrimination legislation and her calls for reform.
Dr Vincent co-authored an article with Marianne Clausen, Amanda Le Couteur, Shona Crabb and Anna Chur-Hansen that was published in Australian Journal of Management. The article, ‘This is not necessarily a gender thing’: Gender-blind talk of organisational leaders(opens in a new window) explores how gender-blindness shows up in discussions of men’s flexible work.
Our research was cited in more than 15 publications this year, including a joint NGO submission to the UN and books published by Routledge, Springer and Elgar. A list of citations is provided in the appendix(opens in a new window).
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