Niki Vincent: Hello everyone and welcome. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which I live and work. I'm coming to you from the lands of the Boon Wurrung People the south-eastern Kulin Nation and I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands where the University of Melbourne campuses are situated: the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Bunurong and Boon Wurrung Peoples and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging and the Aboriginal Elders of other communities who might be here today.
Like you, I'm really looking forward to hearing about intersectionality in action, and the research findings from the University of Melbourne and the Australian Discrimination Law Experts Group. This research has been supported by the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector. In Victoria, the Gender Equality Act came into effect in March 2021 and it's ground-breaking on several fronts, including that it's got the first formal integration of intersectionality into Australian equality law. The Gender Equality Act requires organisations to submit Workplace Gender Audits using gender disaggregated data, and where possible to include data about Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, and sexual orientation. These first audits were submitted to me on the first of December and my team is now analysing that data. We know that across the workforce, there's been a lack of intersectional data for many organisations under the Act. This is the first time they've been asked to collect that sort of data. And so, while it's very exciting that the audits will provide the most transparent data we have today, we can also expect that the data will be improved in each reporting cycle to give a more fulsome picture over time. And this is significant when you consider that the Act applies to more than 300 organisations including all the Victorian universities, all of local government, all of the public service and the broader public sector, around 11% of the state's workforce, about 380,000 employees are covered by the Act.
At the end of March organisations under the Act, some of whom join us today will submit their plans that set out their goals and the actions they will take to address any inequality that they found through their audit. And also set out how they'll measure any change and they need to make reasonable and material progress over two years on what they said that they would do in their gender equality action plans. Organisations have to report on their progress to me every two years, as I said, and we'll make all of this data public. So, all of the data, all of the plans and all of the progress reports. Organisations also have to consider the gendered impact of all of their new public facing policies, programmes and services to ensure they don't create or exacerbate existing inequalities.
As well as ensuring compliance as Commissioner, I have an education role and will continue to build the research and evidence base about what works so that our defined entities can improve gender equality in their organisations. Through our inaugural research grants programme, we funded five projects focused on promoting workplace gender equality and intersectional equality, reducing barriers to women's workforce participation, addressing industrial and occupational gender segregation, and improving pay inequity and other economic outcomes. This project by the University of Melbourne with the Australian Law Experts Discrimination Group was funded to understand the risks and opportunities for the Gender Equality Act. Today's event runs until 12:30 and includes two sessions each followed by discussion. The sessions are ‘Intersectionality in action’, and ‘Understanding the gender sector: Who’s doing this work’. I'll now hand over to the research team to provide an overview of the project. Thanks very much.
Lauren Ryan: Thank you so much, Commissioner Vincent. My name is Lauren Ryan, I just want to welcome everybody to the event on behalf of the Melbourne University research team. And to also just give a few acknowledgments of my own before I kick off. So I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waterways on which I live, work and learn, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation and to pay my respects and give thanks to their Elders past, present and emerging.
On behalf of the University, I'd like to thank the Commissioner and also all the wonderful staff at the Commission for Equality in the Public Sector for their assistance and help and guidance throughout this project. It's been a really lovely working relationship and we’re super grateful for that, in particular, a shout out to Kate Farhall, for all of her interactions and engagement. So, thank you Kate. And just finally, I'd really like to sort of acknowledge and thank the very important participants who were engaged in this research before we get started. We had 46 unbelievable respondents who spent time, shared their knowledge with me, shared their experiences, and also some hard truths that I think have been useful for the research. So I'm looking forward to hopefully sharing their voices with you today and giving a bit of a snapshot of the information that we've received over the past seven months.
As the Commissioner mentioned, this project has been funded as part of the inaugural round of funding in 2021. And it's focused largely on building an evidence base to support the ongoing implementation and development of the Act. The project aims to gather data to examine how the Act evolved, and the social, economic and political conditions that encouraged its adoption. It's looking at how the Act is being implemented and examining the work of the Commission and the defined entities in particular, so a snapshot of what's actually been going on right now in the last few months and then how the Act’s future success can be secured, drawing on the experiences of other jurisdictions nationally and internationally. So, a sort of forward facing piece of work that we hope will help identify risks and opportunities for the Act going forward.
So in addition to the desktop research that was conducted and literature reviews for this particular piece of work we engaged with, as I mentioned, 44 interviewees from, sorry, 44 interviews with 46 respondents from across a range of different entities that included: metropolitan, regional and rural councils, state government departments, unions, tafes, universities, hospitals and health care providers, women's health unions, the health sector, supporting organisations, ministerial staff, and gender-based consultants. And this work was conducted by an interdisciplinary team here at the University that included researchers from the Faculty of Law, Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Business and Economics. All research, kind of, interview respondents were kept completely confidential. So, we've not shared any of their personal information in order to preserve their anonymity and also to ensure that we got really honest research insights and feedback. The interviews were then transcribed, key themes were identified, and relevant research findings were developed, which I'm hoping to share with you now.
To start with, we looked at what some of the contextual factors were, all those sort of social, cultural and political conditions that led to the development of the Act. And the top sort of responses that came through in our research were that it was very much driven by the Rosie Batty family violence incident that occurred and followed on by The Royal Commission into Family Violence that then followed that particular unfortunate incident. There's a lot of, sort of, findings came through around the Our Watch’s, ‘Change the Story’ report being really influential in sort of setting the tone for how this particular piece of legislation was brought into being. And also, of course, the ‘Safe and Strong’ gender equality strategy by the Victorian Government, which was really the ground-breaking piece of work that led to the bill and sort of ongoing development from there. A number of respondents also kind of claimed that the fact that it was a key election promise from the Victorian Labor Government meant that there was really strong commitment behind it, and during the election in 2018 that kind of, I guess, made people feel a little accountable and held them make good on a promise that had been made. In terms of who the key influencers and perhaps key parties that were involved in really making this work come to life. What we found was that almost all respondents spoke about the late Minister for Women, Fiona Richardson and her staff being really influential, and almost the kind of force majeure, driving force of this particular piece of legislation. So, her work was highly, highly valued. They also mentioned Ministers Natalie Hutchins and Gabrielle Williams. There was interestingly, a really strong response for the fact that Victoria has for quite a long time had a very strong gender and women's NGO sector and it was seen as being quite a strong, sort of, sense that laying the groundwork for this particular work had been done by a number of those organisations, in particular, mention was made of the fact that Melbourne was the only city in Australia to establish back in 2000, sorry, back in 1985, two distinct feminist organisations that were based here, being the Vic Women's Trust and the International Women's Development Agency. Also quite a lot of mentions of the Victorian trade unions, particularly the Trades Hall Council, the Australian Services Union and the Community and Public Services Union. So they will all be seen as being heavily influential in making changes and implementing the Bill right through from the design through to its final product.
We asked people whether there were any particular compromises that they felt had been made during the development of the Act and some of these included: a failure to reach beyond the public sector. So obviously recognising that this was a really important place to start and as the Commissioner mentioned, covers around 11% of employees in the state, but there was definitely an appetite amongst respondents to want to see this work move beyond the public sector, and have a reach a little more broadly, as well. Even within the public sector, there was some concern around limited impact for contractors and volunteers. And particularly what this meant for migrant and ethnically diverse women in particular, an example was raised with me around say, hospital and healthcare contractors and the fact that there's often a large majority of women from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds working in these roles, so unfortunately, aren’t kind of benefiting from this legislation right at this point in time. Similarly, there was mentions around some of the limited impacts on current procurement measures and hoping to see those extended as a way I guess, of taking this work more broadly into the public, sorry, the private sector, and also a strong kind of concern around limited consideration for gender responsive budgeting, I guess, more broadly across the sector in terms of how this work was playing out.
In terms of what's working really well so far though, the intent, what we have found is that the Act definitely represents an effective way for practitioners to hold their managers and entities accountable for this work. So, it provides really good leverage to start the discussions and get this work actually rolling within entities and organisations. In most cases, consultation with staff is bringing about really rich and meaningful dialogue and engagement, which was really positive to hear. In particular, I think a lot of people were quite surprised by how engaged certain groups within their entities were willing to be, perhaps some that they thought might have been quite resistant really came to the table and were prepared to have some long and quite rich and meaningful discussions. Even with the challenges of COVID and having to facilitate a lot of that online, I still got really strong feedback there that that had been a positive outcome. Interestingly, some entities have sought to do things such as develop gender equality champions at a business unit level, who have then been upskilled and embedded with knowledge and action in order to sort of take this into their teams and really build capacity across an organisational level. So that was a kind of positive key finding and essentially, I think what this all just shows is that there's loads and loads of goodwill out there within the sector to want to try and do this work as well as possible and to yeah, to kind of take it forward.
In terms of potential challenges and concerns that were highlighted. I'm just going to list a few of those here. And then we're going to go into a couple of them obviously in a little more depth throughout the remainder of this webinar. So key challenges where people were really concerned, or the respondents were quite concerned that all of this work was going to be a bit of a tick-box exercise. That they were going to be required to do a whole bunch of really detailed work upfront, they were going to create these amazing gender equality action plans, and then potentially they were going to sit on a shelf somewhere for two years and not necessarily be actioned. So, wanting to make sure that that work kind of carried forward over the times that are required to continue that process. There was obviously challenges with ongoing COVID disruptions, and a few notes made around some challenges with timeliness of resources from the Commission and requests for perhaps sector specific or site specific templates that may have made some people's lives a little easier. And there was also some talk around engagement challenges for regional and rural entities in particular, and how some were finding almost a need to tweak the language that they use in order to make it more inclusive, which has pros and cons. But it was seeming as needing to take women and gender out of the conversation and make it more just about equality in general in order to get buy-in in those particular entities. Some other key concerns, which I won't delve into for too long, because they really are going to form the bulk of the rest of our discussion were just around a fragmented approach to intersectionality, lack of appropriate resourcing, short term or insecure work, feminisation of the gender sector in particular – and we'll be looking at that later in the session – the relegation of this work to relatively junior employees and some of the challenges that that was kind of raising, and then a bit of a lack of consistent leadership, which we’ll also sort of discuss.
So, just before I hand over to Alysia, I just wanted to do a tiny bit of housekeeping in terms of interaction from all of you wonderful people who have joined us today. We had hoped to have this as more of an interactive format, but we had such an incredible response – with over 500 of you actually originally suggesting you might have joined us this morning – that we had to flip into a webinar format. And that's meant we can't do quite as much of the engaged conversation as we'd hoped but we really do want you to please use the Q&A function to post any questions, comments, stories or insights that you have. And we have moderators who will be going through that Q&A function in order to draw those out for our discussion so that we can hopefully still answer as many of your questions or insights and comments as possible. The chat function is also there as well for more general engagement. But please use the Q&A for helping us to be able to collate information for the discussions. I shall now hand over to Alysia, thank you.
Alysia Blackham: Thanks so much, Lauren and thank you to all of you for being here today. As Lauren has said, we've been absolutely overwhelmed by the response that we've received for today's seminar and I'm pleased to say that we just hit 299 attendees, you can't see that, but we can. And what that means is we've absolutely tipped the number of people that can attend in a Zoom room. So it's really wonderful to see how much enthusiasm and appetite there is to be here today and we're really grateful for that. I’ll start by acknowledging that I am on the lands of the Wurundjeri People, and I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and acknowledge that these lands are the site of celebration, of rituals and of a really vibrant culture that we continue to respect and honour.
I'm going to speak shortly today about intersectionality and how that has been deployed in the Act. And this is one of the things that really came through in those interviews, which Lauren conducted and reading those transcripts, we really get the sense that this is one of the most exciting possibilities of the Gender Equality Act, but also perhaps one of its more challenging elements. So, we thought we would dig into today in terms of how that is playing out in practice. I think many of you are very aware about what intersectionality is, but just to make sure that we're all on the same page. Essentially, intersectionality is a fundamental challenge to how we think about equality and discrimination. It forces us to move beyond siloed discrimination seeing individual grounds in isolation. It forces us to recognise that disadvantage is overlapping, it's compounded, but also when it overlaps, it creates a new form potentially of discrimination or disadvantage, that is different to the individual components. So, I have an image here of the various forms of disadvantage or grounds that might overlap. But of course, there are many more grounds that could be involved in this, my graphic abilities are far less than the complexity of intersectionality. What the idea of intersectionality challenges us to do is to see disadvantage and discrimination in its full context to see each person in a holistic way as their whole, but also more fundamentally, to grapple with the power and the structures that might create or exacerbate disadvantage. So, it forms a radical challenge to discrimination law. And it gives us a radical tool to try to advance equality. One of the real challenges with intersectionality though, is that it has largely remained a theory or on the books, and actually deploying it in a meaningful way has been really problematic. But that's where the Gender Equality Act imposes some quite radical demands of defined entities.
So one of the ways that we can think about intersectionality is about a continuum of understanding. And I've adapted this from Shreya Atrey’s work, and we will be making these slides available to you later. And also the recording of this session. Shreya argues that we can see this as a continuum of understanding, and she bases this on how judges and courts see it. But I think also, we saw this understanding reflected in the interviews that we conducted as well. So we move from understanding discrimination as being based on a single axis or individual grounds, separate, no relationship between them. Through to understanding that we could have one or more grounds that might operate separately, to seeing them as working together as something that is compounded or combining or interacting together. Through to seeing discrimination as something that creates a new form of disadvantage, or discrimination, so these grounds come together to form a hybrid or different form of discrimination, what Shreya calls embedded discrimination. And then finally, in this continuum, we see intersectional discrimination. And Schreyer defines that as a dynamic of sameness and difference emerging in patterns of group disadvantage. So, we understand identities as a whole in their full context, but most fundamentally this requires us to transform and to challenge systems, processes, and norms to address disadvantage. So intersectional discrimination is really about challenging power and systems that create disadvantage. It's more than just about a focus on grounds or how grounds interrelate or overlap, it's actually about challenging the systems and processes that are embedded in our organisations, in our way of doing things, and in the way that we provide public services. So, it is a fundamental challenge to what we see as discrimination and inequality.
One of the really radical aspects of the Gender Equality Act is that it has embedded intersectionality into what it asks of defined entities. So defined entities are asked or required to consider intersectional disadvantage when conducting both gender impact assessments, and workplace gender audits. And to base those audits on gender disaggregated data, and if available, data about Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, and sexual orientation. So, this is a really radical thing to ask of defined entities. But it's also really important for us to understand both who forms our workplace, who forms our workforce, and also who might be impacted by our services and the way that we operate our organisation. What's really important to remember, though, is that the Act is not absolute here. It doesn't insist that this be done in all cases, it's only required if it's practical for gender impact assessments. And it only needs to be used in a gender workplace audit if it is available, though we must still have regard to intersectionality when conducting that audit. For the first time, this has put a really radical ask on defined entities to gather workforce data across a whole different range of characteristics, and to embed that into their audit and into their planning.
So we asked respondents in these interviews, how they understood intersectionality, what it meant to them, and how well their understanding had been embedded across their organisation. What we found was that understandings ranged across this full continuum that Shreya puts forward. We found that some people still were thinking in terms of silos for the most part, but others had a really sophisticated understanding of intersectionality as being about power, systems and this holistic understanding of individuals in their full context. For many people, they noted that they really had a challenge, they really struggled to understand intersectionality as a theory, but then to apply it to their work, it had been a really difficult process of something that they really grappled with and had to work really hard on. But they had gone through that process and there was a real sense that people had done that really hard learning, and they really advanced their understanding and understandings often in their organisation too.
What we did note though, and one of the things that emerges in the literature is that there was a real focus in some of these responses about individual grounds or an individualised understanding of intersectionality. So, it was about focusing on this layering of grounds rather than seeing a person in their whole context and having a holistic understanding of identity. But also, there's a risk that if we focus too much on individuals, and on the individual experience, that we completely miss the way power structures, barriers, and patterns of disadvantage, are embedded and layered into our discussion of inequality and disadvantage. So, one of the things that we would really like to emphasise is how intersectionality should be forcing us to think about power, systems and structures, not just about the data that we collect. While data is essential, and it's really important to see who our workforce is and how our policies interact with the world, it's just one part of challenging these patterns of disadvantage.
The other thing that really emerged in the interviews was how understandings were really uneven across organisations. There were some organisations that had a really strong history of equality measures and they were very comfortable with implementing ideas of intersectionality, across the organisation but others were really struggling. And there was a sense that perhaps the immediate group involved in implementing the Act was really confident with these ideas, but others beyond that purview were really struggling. And there was a real sense that it was really difficult to roll those understandings out more generally. What we did get a sense of, though, was that understandings were really improving with time and given how short a period of time the Act has been in place, that's actually quite quick improvement over quite a short period. Techniques people were using to try to roll out understandings of intersectionality were considered training on the topic, providing support within the organisation in terms of how this would work and how it might play out in a practical substantive way. Strong organisational leadership and senior leadership modelling and role modelling how intersectionality might play out, but also giving concrete examples of what intersectionality might look like in practice. So, impact assessments or consultation, that drew on multiple communities and really focused on looking at people in a holistic way rather than just focusing on gender in isolation. There was a real sense too that this work had been prompted and supported by the Act itself so we're really seeing legislation creating change in real time.
In terms of where we go from here, how do we support an intersectional future in our attempts to advance gender equality? The real sense that we had from this is obviously this is very early days. We've seen a year that's been very difficult on many, many ways, and many, many grounds. COVID has made our lives very difficult generally, but this legislative change has created difficult and very hard work, particularly in some entities. But what we really see here is real glimmers of better to come. This first round, this first process has been really difficult but actually there is a real sense that people have learned a huge amount, they've been able to embed some really good practices and systems. And actually next year, it's going to be so much easier and the next round is going to be so much easier.
One of the key things that came through in these interviews, though, was the need for better data and systems and Lauren has already foreshadowed this. But the consistent feedback that we got was that no defined entity was confident that their data and systems were up to the task, that they needed a new system, that they were working to do that, but it was expensive and difficult. One of the ideas that came through in the interviews that perhaps we can discuss in the Q&A, was whether it was better to have a whole of government approach to improving systems and processes. Rather than relying on over 300 defined entities to each find a better system. Maybe there is something that can be rolled out across the public sector, with obviously the capacity to adapt to individual organisational needs. But rather than trying to reinvent the wheel 300 times, maybe there's a system that can do this across the board.
There's a sense though, even if we have good systems, and even if we have the capacity to collect data, we still need to increase individual trust. Individuals need to be willing to provide their information and they need to have that sense of cultural safety, such that they're willing to disclose what's seen as quite personal information. In a number of entities there was a strong sense that that cultural safety was not yet in place. And so measures were being put forward to try to make people more comfortable. But obviously this requires broader cultural change to make everyone feel included and then the data comes second. So the point that I put on the slide here is that data is important, it's important to know who our workforce is, and how our policies and processes play out in practice but actually, it's not the only thing that we need to do. We also need to focus on how we make our workforce inclusive, nearly as a precondition to collecting that data.
There was also a real sense in the interviews too that people wanted to do more than just create some form of window dressing around intersectionality. It's not enough to just throw out intersectionality as a term, we actually need to confront the structures and systems that create and perpetuate disadvantage. So, the Gender Equality Act here could be a tool to level up our equality initiatives to raise up all different protected characteristics to improve our equality measures. One of the key things that we need to do though going forward, is to make sure that we actually include diverse voices in the process of implementation. And this is something that we noticed in conducting the interviews, and it relates to what Lauren is going to speak about in a few minutes around who is doing the work in a sense. And it's often women, and it doesn't always capture the real diversity that we have in Australia. So the real question is, how do we meaningfully include diverse voices in this process? it could be through consultation, but more fundamentally, it could be around how we create and structure the workforce that we tasked with this work. And so, I'll leave that to Lauren to speak more about in a minute.
One of the things that I will say, Lauren, just before we jump to the discussion, is that in terms of how we go forward from here, we really need stronger support for defined entities. This is perhaps something for the Commission to focus on going forward. People really expressed a need for examples, case studies, and really targeted and practical capacity building. So, I think as we go forward in future rounds of reporting, and in future audits, these are measures that could really help to give targeted support to go forward. So, we have some space now for discussion, questions and a Q&A. We will be monitoring both the Q&A and also the chat function and you can also raise your hand if you wish, and I can allow you to have a verbal question if you prefer.
Beth Gaze: Thanks Alysia, and my name’s Beth Gaze from Melbourne Law School, I'll be facilitating this chat. And I do encourage you to raise issues because after all, you're the people who are hands on and we're really, we're really looking forward to hearing from you the issues that are particularly important to you. So we've got one question in the chat and that's that ‘we've had feedback during our gender equality action plan staff consultation that gender diverse people can't see how the Act supports them. Is there any way the gender equality principles in the Act could be updated into the future to be more holistic and inclusive about gender equity, some of the principles take a binary approach to gender equity, in particular, principle five, doesn't appear to acknowledge intersectionality in domestic violence. Domestic violence impacts children, not just schools, gender diverse people experience high incidence of domestic violence and discrimination?’ And I have to say, if I could just add, from my own perspective, focusing on intersectionality within the category of women leaves out a whole other area of intersectional categories as well. So however, we do have to operate within reality that this is a piece of legislation set up for gender equality, even if gender is broadly defined. So perhaps Alysia, could you comment on that?
Alysia Blackham: Yes, thanks Beth. I'm just playing around with pinning as I, as I try to speak. So it's a little bit, my multitasking is being challenged today. Absolutely, and one of the things that really came through in some of the interviews as well was about how, because this is a Gender Equality Act, it has limited the impact in the context of intersectionality, but also more generally, because we are primarily focused on gender. But of course, intersectionality encourages us to see inequality more holistically. So, we're nearly doing this with one hand behind our back, because this is an Act purely focused on gender equality. When the Act was being developed, there was a lot of discussion about how do we better acknowledge that gender is not binary? How do we make sure that this is included in the Act’s terms in a meaningful way? And I don't think we've quite gotten there yet. And as the comment says in the question, yes, you know, gender diverse, people don't feel like the Act reflects them or their experience because of the language that is used. I think that's something that can be revised in future rounds, potentially, in terms of the materials and the supporting guidelines. But as you say, Beth, we are working within a legislative framework that isn't necessarily fully accommodating of that. One of the things that came through in the interviews too, was that there was a concern that sometimes when people were recording their information as gender non-binary, they were being clumped into weird categories in the way the systems were being navigated. So, I also think that our systems, not just the Act, and the indicators, but also the systems aren't necessarily set up in a way that's fully holistic and fully accommodating of everyone's needs. So, I think this is certainly something that, you know, will hopefully be taken forward in future rounds. And maybe it's something that Kate or Niki could comment on, as well, in terms of how they see the Act developing in the future. It's certainly something that came through in our discussions.
Beth Gaze: Did either Kate or Niki want to have a comment on that?
Niki Vincent: I won't comment on that. I think that what you’ve both said, is really comprehensive, it’s something that I think we can look at, as the Act evolves over time. And there's certainly some things that we're already looking at in terms of the comments that you've made, that were made as part of your research that we've that we're beginning to address. So, it's another one for, us to look at over time.
Beth Gaze: Thanks Niki. And there was a follow up question, very similar to that, which was suggestions for increasing the LGBTIQA+ focus. And I think we just need to take on board that that's an area, I guess we have to start somewhere, but that's an area that's flagged as being an important one for development. I've got two other areas that are raised in questions so maybe I'll just go to those. So, one is the question of, sorry, I'll just go back up in the chat till I find it, ‘what were some of the more mature organisations doing by way of including intersectionality in their preparation work for developing their gender equality action plans?’ and a similar question, ‘I'm keen to understand how people are approaching setting intersectionality targets. 50/50 gender balance has become the norm, but what, what rationale do we have to inform intersectionality targets?’
Alysia Blackham: So I'll start with the first one, which is about what are the sophisticated organisations doing? One of the things to acknowledge is that this is very early days. So even organisations with a really sophisticated understanding are still finding their feet in terms of how the Act plays out. Some of the things that were being done, were particularly around really good consultation. So, trying to bring in as many voices as possible to the development of these different programmes. And also, kind of a really sophisticated understanding of who might be impacted by policies and programmes and who might be part of the workforce. I got the sense that no organisation was particularly happy with their data and systems. So even the most sophisticated organisations still felt like their data was incomplete or not necessarily representative of the organisation in its full diversity. So best practice still wasn't quite there in that sense. Many organisations had built in better data collection, better acknowledgement of intersectionality into their action plans, so that was a recurring theme through the interviews that actually people are planning to do better and they're putting in place measures to do better. And I think that's one of the things that we really thought was important to emphasise that this is a learning process. And so, you know, this is about improving over time. And the whole way that the Act is structured is that this will improve in future iterations. So, as Lauren will foreshadow, there's been a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety around how this is done in organisations. But actually, this is a learning process, and it doesn't need to be perfect first time. So I think that's something that I would really want to emphasise is that, you know, acknowledging that this is really hard, we don't yet have some really concrete examples of best practice, but people who are really aspiring to good practice, and that seems to be a work in progress. And then I’ve forgotten the second part Beth because I got hung up on the first part. Sorry Beth you’re on mute.
Beth Gaze: Sorry, that was in relation to setting targets in developing a gender equality action plan, how to deal with the intersectionality aspects.
Alysia Blackham: And it may be that targets aren't appropriate. It's possible, for example, that we could set targets based on the general population. But we know that the public sector does not reflect the general population. And maybe that's something that could be a starting point. But also, our ABS data is really incomplete in many ways. As some of my colleagues have written about previously, essentially, we don't know a great deal about so many of these things. We don't have great data at the Bureau of Statistics, or in the public sector, so it's very difficult to pitch quotas or targets in this sense. So it's more about then recognising people's diversity as a whole but also looking at our systems and processes. So maybe it's less about targets and quotas and more about looking at how our systems are playing out in particular communities or for particular people, when we understand their identity holistically. Beth, you may have different ideas as to how you might pitch targets or quotas but I think the systems are probably the stronger priority.
Beth Gaze: I guess my comment was going to be that I think what we're dealing with is a process, not an event. So there's a huge amount of education that's going on within entities and also, there's a real recognition now of how inadequate the systems are both at the ABS level and within organisations to actually collect the data that's even necessary to begin thinking properly about intersectionality. So, we can all be very pleased that the Act has actually raised intersectionality as a central issue here because I think if the legislation hadn't done it, then it's very hard to get it on the agenda. But it's this process of education and working hard to change systems, which is going to be ongoing. Interestingly, I've got two questions that relate to that. So one is, I might read them out together, but maybe you want to comment separately. So one is, ‘how can we ensure the data on people's identity is collected ethically and for the right reasons by organisations, and actually used for meaningful change, not just reporting?’ So I guess that's partly the question of trust: can we collect reliable data? and are people confident it will be used correctly? And then secondly, and probably flowing on at a more general level, ‘Is it possible to have a whole of government support that recognises, sorry, trauma created in the past as well as actions going forward?’ Sorry, I think that's an important issue but I'm not sure that that's actually, I think that's one within organisations, I think the Act itself is future oriented. The second question, ‘will you be providing information about how to analyse the data, because we have a large amount of raw data, and it's really laborious to look over all data without subjective analysis, and without a statistical programme?’ So I think that almost comes back to that question of how do we deal with intersectional data? I think Niki wants to come in there.
Niki Vincent: Just to say that we do have guidance on the website, and we did notify organisations via our newsletter that we had the guidance out late last year, I think probably about November that we put that guidance out, it's there. We also have new resources on intersectionality, we've got some, we've had some really fantastic work done by MindTribes, in collaboration with the Commission, they've developed, not just kind of resources that we put on to, you know, just sort of dialogue on the, on the website, but also some fantastic case studies and some great podcast interviews, as well. So, some really practical resources there.
Alysia Blackham: Which is exactly what participants were asking for Niki, so yeah, definitely ahead of the curve, so it's great that that that material is now available. And the question about how do we know this data is being collected for the right reasons. That came through in the interviews really strongly that people were concerned about their privacy, they were concerned about what was going to be done with the information. And in some cases, people were so concerned that actually they were purposely trying to subvert the data that was being collected. So they were actually responding with the opposite to what they actually felt or believed or you know, what their identity was just to confuse the system. So, I think this is one of the really challenging aspects is how do we build trust in our organisation? How do we build that cultural safety so that people feel comfortable acknowledging who they are, and actually providing data that's accurate, and fulsome? And I think that's a real challenge. And what some organisations said is that they have started doing this in recruitment. So, people are more willing to provide fulsome information in the recruitment process. Which seems a little bit surprising because we know discrimination often occurs in recruitment. So, I'm not necessarily certain that that is a point of cultural safety but people were saying that they find it much harder to collect data for existing employees, so those who are already part of the workforce, it's much harder then to gather that data. I have no magic bullet on that one. I think this is something where organisations are going to have to do a lot of work to encourage people to feel safe and trusting in the organisation. And I think that does play into this question about past trauma. People who have had a bad experience in the workplace are less likely to trust an organisation with their true whole being, less likely to bring their whole identity to work. So, I think this is something where there's going to need to be longer term work. And it's something that you know, we need to understand is, you know, this whole base layer of work that needs to happen beneath the Act. So, no easy or quick solutions, but certainly building that trust and building, that faith in the organisation is going to be really critical here, Niki.
Niki Vincent: Yeah, thank you. That's great. I'd also add, it's not a, it's not a silver bullet to the cultural safety issue. But the fact that we have both quantitative and qualitative data collection, and that qualitative data is anonymous. So, it adds a level of safety, I think, for people that they won't be identified and also provides the organisation with some sense of the level of intersectional representation within their organisation without linking it to a particular employee.
Alysia Blackham: So a number of respondents noted that the People Matters survey seem to be getting much better data than their payroll system, because that survey was anonymous, whereas payroll was not. So that allowing for anonymous reporting can be really important in encouraging people to feel confident in sharing information. But even then, response rates weren't always very high. So, I think part of this is about acknowledging the limits of the data that we have, and that we have some information but it cannot be seen as a full depiction of who we are, because it doesn't represent half or, you know, some proportion of the workforce.
Niki Vincent: I think both of those things to add, will provide an indication to organisations so the gap between their workforce data and their qualitative data and the level of engagement in the qualitative survey are indications of a level of trust and, and culture that might need to change for each organisation.
Alysia Blackham: And that can then be paired with consultation as well. So as developing the action plans, you know, and consulting on the results of the audit data, that's a really important check as well on the data that's held elsewhere. So, I think one of the challenges is that the Act has brought in a lot of things all at once but the reason it's done that is because they work together and they are really complementary in helping us check how these things work in practice, and making sure that we're on the right track. So, we acknowledge that there's a lot of work here, but they are really important components to create a holistic whole, in terms of how we move forward.
Beth Gaze: Thank you very much for that. Now, I've got, I've got questions in both the Q&A and in the chat so I'll come back to the chat and raise some of the questions for there, from there. So one of the questions is ‘re: targets, what approaches can help us acknowledge how non-binary people are reflected within the public sector, especially in relation to gender balance targets?’
Alysia Blackham: As I, as I said before, I'm not sure whether targets will be appropriate in all cases. I think it comes back to your point, Beth, that this is about a process. In part, the aim is to achieve equality but how we see equality will obviously be different depending on where we start from and where we're aiming to get to. Targets are not always clear and easy, 50% women does not necessarily seem appropriate in the public sector, where we're already well past 50% women, we need something more ambitious. So, I think this, at the moment, the Act does not yet set quotas or targets, it has the capacity to do so in the future. But I think how we set those targets is something that's really going to have to come from understanding where we are now, and where we're going to. And if we have this intersectional understanding of disadvantage, I think it's more about confronting our systems and processes, and less about setting a numerical target. It might be that it's a more qualitative target, and a qualitative ambition, about including everyone, rather than looking at numbers on the page, noticing that our numbers are currently incomplete, and not necessarily reliable. So numerical targets are not necessarily appropriate.
Beth Gaze: Great. Well, thank you very much for that. There's a range of different questions in the chat and I think we've pretty much covered most of those. But maybe just to finish off with one question here, ‘can you talk more about the intersectional elements combining to create a new form of discrimination? What does that look like in your thinking?’ just to round out this session on intersectionality.
Alysia Blackham: So the example that emerges, kind of a lot is about the intersection of gender, age, disability, maybe and cultural status or ethnicity. So, someone from a non-Anglo-Saxon background, perhaps who is a Muslim, who wants to wear a headscarf in the workforce, who also has a disability, and looking at the barriers to access to the workforce, for example, and often for women we overlay this with caring responsibilities as well. And so that might be about ensuring that they have access to appropriate flexible work, that they have a workforce that's accommodating of prayer times and gives them flexibility to do that, but also recognises that then they need to go for the school pickup as well. But also in recruitment, making sure that there are no barriers that we're reaching out to communities who wouldn't necessarily apply for work, to make sure that they have the opportunity to join the workforce in the first place. So, I think one of the challenges when we think about this is it's not just about recruitment, it's also about retention, it's about creating a safe workspace and a culture that is inclusive and inviting, and it's also about making sure people remain in the organisation going forward. So, it's a whole lifecycle approach as well, keeping people in work, making sure that work is rewarding and quality work, which perhaps foreshadows what Lauren's going to talk about in a second. But also making sure that our workplaces are inclusive and welcoming for all members of the workplace. Of course, this has then further play out in terms of how we enact policies, and how we deliver public services and that's a whole other issue, which obviously, each defined entity will be slightly different in terms of how those policies play out. The example that Shreya Atrey uses in her work about the critical intersectional example, is about the prohibition of multiple marriages, which only affects certain women of a certain community, so it was an example from the South African courts. So, it's quite a niche example, it's quite a niche rule that affects quite a small population, but particularly women, particularly of a particular religion, and of a particular age. So, seeing these things in a holistic understanding of how systems are creating disadvantage, I think is really critical here. And it's hard to talk about in the abstract, which is why I think it's really great that the Commission has produced these examples of really good practice case studies, because I think that's what we really need going forward.
Beth Gaze: Thanks very much, Alysia. So Susan, did you want to make a comment?
Susan Ainsworth: Yes. Sorry. I didn't want to make a comment so much, as just note that there's been a question, sorry, I've been watching the chat, and then a bit back and forth between the Q&A and there's a question here about universal design policy, which I thought was relevant to intersectionality. So, I don't want to make us go over time, but I just thought it would be relevant to raise. So, ‘our council is about to adopt a universal design policy, which has been led by our Disability Advisory Committee, and has the potential to address intersectionality. Have you considered or discussed universal design as a more holistic approach?’
Alysia Blackham: It's a really great question. It's not something that emerged at all in this study. But I fully understand this, because we're actually talking about this in the university context as we speak. So, I think this is a really important way of thinking about intersectionality. In that if we design a way of working, a way of delivering services that accommodates everyone, we don't need to think about in the context of disability, reasonable accommodations, because we've already accommodated inclusion and we've already accommodated everyone. So, I certainly think that is a way forward, I think it does do a lot of work in terms of accommodating people's identity as a holistic whole. And making sure that the things that we do accommodate the most people possible. I think it comes back to this idea that if we create an inclusive workplace where everyone feels included, where jobs are flexible, where jobs are secure, and good, that's going to accommodate everyone. And so, there are many things that we can do that are good practice that will do a lot of the work around intersectionality, and around addressing discrimination and advancing equality. So, I think this is a really important way forward.
Beth Gaze: Thank you very much for that Q&A. I think that was really interesting and enlightening. Now, I'd like to hand over back to Lauren, who is going to talk to us about the findings of the research on the workforce that's engaged in undertaking this gender equality work.
Lauren Ryan: Thanks so much Beth for that, and thanks to everyone for participating in what was a really interesting Q&A session around a really important topic, so thank you for that. As you mentioned, I'm going to try and take us through some of the findings around actually what didn't really set out to be initial intention of this research. But when we started talking to our respondents and started talking to people actually on the ground at the coalface of doing this work, some of the really strong themes that came through about just how challenging this work can be and what some of the conditions that they're working in and under are and how perhaps we might be able to best support that work going forward in order to try and make this and other implementation processes as successful as possible.
So, I'm going to start out with just a couple of notes around in general the Victorian Public Sector, which has got 68% of its employees identifying as women and 59% of the Victorian Public Service identifying as women. So as Alysia mentioned, it's already, you know a heavily kind of feminised and women dominated space. What we tended to find in the interviews was that in entities and government departments, the respondents that we spoke to, at least tended to be more junior women in the earlier stages of their careers. But when we spoke to people from consulting groups, unions and other peak bodies, they tended to be more senior in the later stage of their careers, with perhaps a little more ability to influence decision makers and have a bit more of a sway over certain aspects of the implementation process.
Again, we unfortunately didn't actually collect quantitative intersectional data, which is a real limitation of this research and a learning of us in terms of perhaps gathering some of the information. But anecdotally, we can say that, almost in its entirety, the respondents were largely white, or from an Anglo-Saxon appearing background. I think it's important to admit that this is also the case in our research team, we suffer from the same fate. We've got senior researchers who are largely all white women from relatively privileged backgrounds, in privileged jobs, and who are sort of coming at this from a particular mindset. And I think this is worth calling out and worth kind of putting a bit more attention and focus onto how we can shift the dial around that a little more meaningfully. I will just say that our two fabulous RAs were both younger women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, so it was great to have their voices and contributions as well. What does this mean? It means that essentially, when we sing, as I said, a diverse range of voices, and really the lived experience coming through, so it's not representative of where the sector is looking to be more broadly, in terms of its goals and ambitions. And I think it indicates, as Alysia has mentioned, the challenges of really embedding intersectionality and diversity within the sector.
One of the really, really big issues that came out, it was probably the number one priority issue for everyone across the interview was essentially a lack of adequate resourcing. And that has implications across a number of different topics that I'm going to sort of speak to this morning. I've just popped up a quote here from one of our interviewees, just to give you a bit of a sense of what's sort of going on here on the ground. So that was, ‘I've got a 12-month contract and my contract’s up at the end of March start of April…and even though we're supposed to include this in the GEAP around resourcing, there's just no commitment on how this will be implemented. There's no commitment on resourcing a project worker or resourcing a program lead, like there's literally nothing and that's probably going to be a really big challenge, to be really honest.’ So, I heard a number of kind of similar sentiments from people where they just felt like the workforce planning element was perhaps not as sophisticated as it could have been. And that was creating issues moving forward.
We mentioned a little bit before the sort of feminisation of the gender sector and that was clearly evident in the interviewee respondents that we were able to kind of contact despite trying to get as diverse a range of people as we could, 44 out of the 46 interviewees were women, identified as women, and a lot of them spoke about a fairly sort of insecure nature of the work that they were taking. So, a lot of sort of contracted work, a lot of sort of short six to 12 month contracts, or people being pulled across from other teams and departments to work on this work in a fairly insecure sort of situation for a period of their time. Another quote here from an interview way just to give you a flavour, ‘there's quite a lot of stress and overburden and overwork within the gender sector around implementing this work. And a lot of women are finding that it's ironically become a really feminised kind of issue in and of itself, actually, the huge amount of work that's required to go about doing this work within organisations.’ So, I think that sort of speaks to the sense of where this challenge is coming from. I want to take a minute just to sort of try and make sure we're all on the same page around understanding some of the challenges of workforce feminisation. Obviously, in women dominated organisations, they tend to find that the average remuneration is lower than for male dominated organisations. Similarly, performance pay and other kinds of benefits and bonuses play a greater role in male dominated industries, leading to higher gender pay gaps for total remuneration. And as we mentioned already before a bit in some of the discussions women dominated workplaces tend to have a larger proportion of part-time employees or employees needing to work flexibly, which is attributed to largely people with family and caregiving responsibilities.
Now interestingly, there was the sort of conflicting challenges around the majority being women led staff in this kind of industry. For some people, having women in these gender related roles was really crucial to the movements success and seeing about kind of having demonstrated leadership by women having engagement by women and having that lived experience and lived voice of kind of gender coming through. But for others, there was also this real sense that implementation of the Act continues just to be seen as something that's solving women's problems and it's something that blokes don't really have to think about. So, there was a sense that by having it too feminised and too female dominated, we weren't really getting the buy-in and engagement of the men that we need to kind, or of gender diverse people, who we kind of need to bring in on the journey as well. One respondent commented, ‘a lot of organisations are putting women in charge of this process. And it's seen as something that's for the women, where actually the places where I see it work better is when you have gender equity committees that have a cross section of genders.’ And I think that came through in the research as well.
The practitioners, particularly female women who are working in this space, they felt they really lacked the decision-making power necessary to create lasting and impactful change. So often, they were sort of women, junior women working in junior roles during the bulk of the work. And then they felt that they must try and either negotiate with or persuade more senior managers, who were often men of the value and importance of this work. And unfortunately, some of them felt like that was often occurring under some fairly hostile conditions or conditions that made them uncomfortable to raise issues or feel like they were just always a little bit banging their head against a brick wall trying to be heard and understood. One respondent noted in respect to a particular staff network that they work with, that in this team, ‘there's literally only one or two men, and like 10 women, but even in those meetings, the one man speaks for the majority of the time…representing everyone's opinions’, and this was a bit of an ongoing challenge and issue that people were facing.
A lot of this, I think comes down to a bit of inconsistent leadership on this particular issue, and perhaps something that we can discuss and try and think about how best to address in the future. For some of the respondents, leadership from senior managers was really strong and visible and this made their jobs significantly easier, they had great buy-in, they had good attention and good visibility across the organisation. Unfortunately, for others, there were quite a few that felt very alone and very unsupported and often just a single person tasked with the majority of the work in some of the smaller entities who were really struggling to get that that traction and buy-in from their decision makers. Other respondents felt like their senior leaders paid lip service to the Act and were quite supportive of it in public, but they didn't provide the resourcing or the support to actually implement it properly, and they saw that as a real kind of disconnect in terms of the actual commitment and engagement to the outcomes and intentions of the Act. And interestingly others spoke of having pretty good and significant kind of leadership from their senior managers but experiencing these challenges when it came to getting middle management on board. So that was often where they felt the gatekeeping and the roadblocking sort of occurred and it was difficult to actually kind of pass the work once it was done up the hierarchy in order to make sure that it was being seen and signed off on by the right people. And I'll just summarise that with a quote here from one of the interview participants, which was ‘the feminisation of the workforce, the burnout, the stress, the anxiety, and the overwhelm, COVID certainly played a role in that, but it feels as though to many an extent, it's also just been challenges with people reaching their decision makers, there's those on the ground who are doing the work, and then there are the decision makers in certain executive areas, and it's just really difficult to get that buy-in.’
As you can imagine what this is sadly leading to is a heightened sense of stress and a high potential for burnout sort of across the sector. And this came through either individually by people I'd spoken to or in some cases where they’d observed it within their teams or within other kind of colleagues that they were speaking to across other networks. One respondent who was a consultant who worked across a number of different defined entities share the following story with me. She said that ‘there were people in tears and deeply distressed by carrying the can for this process in their organisations. I spoke to a colleague yesterday, and they don't even want to talk to her anymore, because they know that she's going to open her mouth around the Gender Equality Act. And some of its really damaging stuff. Ironically, when we're talking about gender equality…and most of these women are women, most of these people are women, the amount of stress that it's putting on them is just counterproductive.’ Unfortunately, this did mean that several respondents shared with me that they were either already planning to leave their roles or considering an expectation to perhaps do so in the future. And that's, I guess, quite concerning because there's a whole lot of institutional knowledge and skill there with these people who have been doing this work in this first round, that I imagine organisations will want to retain and hold onto going forward. So, it's certainly something for, I guess, managers and people within those people teams to really consider going forward. A couple of interview quotes here to sum up the sense of what was coming out through this particular element around stress and burnout. One woman shared with me, ‘I can't tell you how many times I've just gone I don't know if we're going to deliver … how is it possible this is such a significant piece of work? And is it going to be enough? You know, is it going to be what the Commission was hoping for? Is it going to be what our people are hoping for, what our employees and our potential employees are hoping for? The weight of that world is certainly on my shoulders as an individual.’ So they felt that very acutely on their level, and perhaps not super supported by their organisation to get that work done.
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it was dealing with the audit data where most organisations felt that they had the most burnout. And this is obviously the first time this has taken place and it was a learning process for everybody, but the summary and sense was that ‘the audit data was probably where we saw the most burnout…I can think of a handful of data custodians who had a bit of a breakdown, and for some of them, it meant that they just didn't have complete data, and they won't have complete data for this year’s submission. Because the person just physically couldn't get it done anymore. It was like it was too much.’ So we as we know, this, we mentioned, it's learning where hopefully, you know, once something is done once, it's always hopefully easier to do it again. But I think it's just worth really noting and understanding the pressure that people felt that they were under in order to really kind of bring this work to light and I'm sure are feeling a sense of relief now that it's all done.
These quotes really show though, that there's a huge amount of commitment and goodwill out there in the sector. And that people really want to do this work well, and they want to do it to a point where it's going to have a high-quality outcome. So I think we just need to find the best ways, collectively to support people in that journey and support staff and organisations in order to achieve that goal. As Alysia mentioned back in her section, I think one of the recommendations perhaps either for the Commission or the sector more broadly and entities themselves to recognise, is just reframing the language a little bit to emphasise that this is still a process of ongoing mutual learning, that this will evolve and improve over time, and that there isn't an expectation that everything has to be 100% perfect, right at the get go. I think we just want people to be doing their best and achieving their best in that instance, and trying to sort of bring that forward. So there's a hope that that may help to remove some of the stress.
I think this sort of brings us now to just before we open up for a discussion on this particular topic, I guess some thoughts around what we can do with this and everything always comes back to resourcing, I guess, unfortunately, but making sure that entities are investing adequate amounts of money and I guess budgeting for staff in order to implement the Act is really important. And making sure that this includes longer term year on year workforce planning and meaningful buy in from senior decision makers so that people don't feel quite so much like everything's just rolling from one short contract to the next short contract, and whether it's even going to be continued on into the future, if they're not there. I think, yeah, similarly to the discussion that was just held before, we need to also think quite seriously about how to shift the dial on getting more men and gender diverse people either into the operational roles or supporting these operational roles, as well as more people of colour, all abilities, ages and sexual orientations so that we can have a better diverse representation of the experiences of not just the workforce, but the general public and I'm sure that's going to enrichen and enliven the outcomes and the process of where the Act can actually kind of take itself and create change. So, with that I shall open the floor up to discussion and comments again, and I welcome all panellists to sort of join in on this conversation at this point in time, thank you.
Leah Ruppanner: Just gonna give you a minute to put some comments in the chat. We appreciate the feedback, we're getting full stop and understand and will incorporate some of your comments into our own approaches. Some questions, I think this is a moment that's been hitting kind of an emotional chord within the group and you can see that coming through quite clearly in the comments in the chat around resources around planning. I just wanted to open up perhaps to the panel, in the first instance, to have a discussion about maybe some of the ways in which some of the comments or some of the feedback here is resonating and/or some of the things that are being, so Jill asks ‘what is being considered or put in place to help support practitioners?’ So just opening up with that question, maybe in the first instance, if anyone wants to take that, while the questions come through the chat?
Niki Vincent: What I'll say is that we heard this, I mean, it was quite confronting to have those quotes and, and really, you know, feel what people were experiencing. We heard this through the implementation of the of the Act, as people were collecting their data and so forth and ironically, we would get often male heads of organisations saying they needed an extension, because the, because of the impacts of the people who were doing this work, who were women who were more greatly impacted by the, pandemic, and so forth and it's, you know, my reflection back was who, whose responsibility is that, like, you know, how do you, do you recognise the irony in that, in that request, that you have only women doing this work? Et cetera. And it's, it's an ongoing conversation that we've been having, but I, but I absolutely acknowledge the impact that it was having on those individuals in that circumstance, I think we have to deal with that and we'll have to think very carefully about how we deal with that before the next round of data collection, and the next, progress reports and so forth. But I also feel, you know, and Alysia and others have reflected, this is a long-term process, we don't expect it all to be done perfectly this time around and in some ways, if it's not done well, this time around and, and the resources haven't been put into ongoing implementation and achieving what is required under the Act, which is reasonable and material progress, then the consequences of that will come back to the organisation in terms of not, not meeting its obligations, then having to go through a process with me around how they are going to meet their obligations and then again, the fallout potentially if they don't, which will be, you know, compliance notices, public, you know, public notification about the fact that they haven't met their obligations, and so forth. So, you know, eventually, all this will come back around to the organisation, if they haven't done it appropriately but that doesn't, that, you know, that doesn't quell the anxieties of the people actually trying to do this and, and doing it from a place of incredible passion and commitment, and wanting to get it right. Some of the, some of the responses to requests for extensions at the moment, some of my responses have been to say, there is a, there is a capacity under the Act for you to submit the GEAP as you have it now, the gender equality action plan as you have it now and then as you continue to evolve it to resubmit. The Act allows you to not get it right the first time around, for that to be an evolving document and so I hope that organisations can take heart that, that, you know, there is that capacity as one, one of the things I'll say about this, but happy for others to contribute, including Kate, Kate Farhall, who's in my team, who's also receiving, you know, her team takes the, the queries.
Alysia Blackham: One of the things that we thought, Niki, might be worth considering going forward and as we revise the Act, is around nominating a senior leader who has responsibility for the implementation of the Act, the buck stops with them. And that's one of the things that Beth and I did put forward originally in the initial consultation, when the Act was being developed, that we actually thought this was really critical for having senior leadership buy-in and support and appropriate resourcing. And it wasn't taken up at the time that the Act was developed but the more we heard about the difficulties, the lack of resourcing, short-term resourcing, lack of leadership buy-in, we thought actually, that might be really critical in future iterations.
Niki Vincent: Yeah. And in certainly in the guidance around how to develop your gender equality action plan that's there. But it's, it's not, it's not necessarily there, you know, and it's not necessarily enforceable, as you say. And so that may be something to look at, yeah. I mean, we've connected with the leaders of all the organisations, they're the ones who have to tell us who, who they are nominating and the data platform and all of that, so they have to engage in some way but it's not the kind of engagement obviously, in some organisations, I mean, many organisations are, do have incredible engagement from their leadership, but it's not the case obviously across the board. And something we will have to look at, I think.
Lauren Ryan: Yeah, I just wanted to add if possible, that I think one of the ways that, at least the respondents I spoke to, were really dealing with this was the incredible, I think support and capacity building that was coming through across the informal networks that different entities have made up themselves. And they've kind of developed this really great, I think, yeah, almost yeah, underground network of organisations that are working together to really kind of try and support each other. So obviously, we would love them to not be in a position where they're feeling so stressed and concerned about it in the first place. But it was really beautiful to see the interactions that were coming out, and that different kind of parts of sectors had lobbied together in order to have these kind of regular catchups and regular knowledge sharing type approaches. So that's sort of a, I guess, a stopgap and something that would be nice to see continuing on, although having the support behind it to make it more of a fruitful experience, rather than a bit of a [inaudible].
Kate Farhall: I just might jump in, as sort of Niki threw to me before to maybe add a little bit in terms of what we're doing at our end to try and support the people on the ground doing this work. And I think just to add a few, kind of, maybe behind the scenes insights that hopefully help you understand that, that we're really trying to work, you know, in concert with you and to support you, and that we absolutely understand that so many of you are really busting a gut to get this work done and oftentimes, because you're, you're really committed and you really care. So I guess a lot of the conversations that Niki and I have, for example, in the Commission are around, okay, at what point do we, you know, tap senior leaders on the shoulder because it's above the pay grade of the people that we're corresponding with, you know, on a more regular basis, or, you know, if we do tap senior leaders on the shoulder at this point, if we get Niki involved and get her talking to your CEOs, is that going to come down on you really hard? We want to avoid that. So we're often having those conversations about, okay, how's this gonna flow through an organisation? How do we push to get senior leaders, you know, to take this seriously and to get them on board? but in a way, that's not going to kind of backfire. So, we are having those conversations internally and trying to get that balance, right, as well.
I guess the other point that I would make around this kind of first round of obligations that we're all doing for the first time, for us, as well in the Commission is when we're sort of designing, you know, our compliance checking processes and thinking about our communications, we're really trying to work with you collaboratively and with the understanding that this is the first time, none of us will get it right, you know, probably or if you do, you know, amazing, you're a superstar. So how can we sort of acknowledge the effort and, and work with you to kind of build your capacity within your organisations to keep improving and to make that, you know, material progress as we move through the cycles. So we are trying to kind of approach this first round of obligations with an understanding that, you know, we're all learning and, and we should be, you know, helping you to build the best you can with the resources that you have, rather than, you know, expecting perfection from the outset. So, I hope that kind of helps, helps you understand where we're coming from, and gives you a sense that we're, we're really trying to support you, those doing the work on the ground.
Alysia Blackham: Niki, there are some comments in the chat around the importance of informal networks, which Lauren just spoke about. Some people saying that they're not aware of the networks, how do they get details, they're doing a lot of work having to manage those networks informally and that perhaps those networks could be expanded to senior leaders and CEOs to help with key learning and support? Is that something that the Commission might take up to help facilitate those connections? Obviously, the Commission has an excellent mailing list, which is how you go further about today. So is that something that could be advanced from the Commission's perspective to build those peer networks?
Niki Vincent: Definitely, I think. We did, we did commission a piece of research around communities of practice and Kate may be more across whether we've actually, that's been finished or not yet I'm not sure of the state and you might not be sure either Kate.
Kate Farhall: Unfortunately it's happening in another team so I’m not across the detail on that one, sorry.
Niki Vincent: The communities of practice are something that we do recognise, and they were happening informally. We supported some, the establishment of some in particular areas as well and, and it is something that we see is absolutely important and potentially expanding as time goes on.
Susan Ainsworth: Jill Sears from Melbourne water has just put a message in the chat saying to message her if you'd like to join the network, and the question is which network is it a Jill? So maybe Jill if you put the, if you could put a contact email or something in the chat so we can capture that, at least the one that exists at the moment even if it's informal.
Leah Ruppanner: There are some questions too just to flag about streamlining process to have them sit a bit more aligned with existing metrics that are being collected. And/or so, [Genie?] has a question ‘as a part of our GEAP, we will be improving our systems and data, it would be valuable to understand that the next audit will require the same data or if it will change eg remunerations definitions?’ So I don't know if this is, you know, if these are things you can answer.
Niki Vincent: It’s a great question. It's certainly something that's a very live issue for us at the moment. And, and it's fair to say, there will be some changes the next time around, because some things haven't worked as well as we would like them to. And I think I probably can say that the level to CEO, the way that we worked out levels to CEO is likely to change the next time around, we've also got other issues coming in with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency now collecting state level public sector data, and so there'll be some changes to kind of work with their systems and we’ll be contributing to their systems potentially changing as well. So, this was really a test for us and for defined entities and I imagine that, you know, as definitions evolve, over time, there will be minor changes. But there will be some changes the next time around, and we hope there won't be too many kind of major changes after that. But we would, we will be doing that in consultation with the with defined entities to understand and we know already, because we've had lots of feedback around that, to find out you know, what works and what doesn't, what hasn't worked, but feel free to add Kate?
Kate Farhall: Yeah, I think you've, you've captured it. You know, it was a first round for us as well and we tried to make, you know, the tools and the data we were collecting, you know, as, as user friendly and useful as possible. But, you know, on reflection, some of those things could definitely be improved. So, we'll be doing that work, sort of in the second half of this year, once we've processed and analysed the data a little more fulsomely, we'll be able to reflect on what worked, what didn't, we'll do some more consultation and hopefully improve, improve that data collection for everyone. So yes, likely to be some changes, but hopefully, not huge or alarming ones. But yeah, thanks.
Niki Vincent: I think one of the things I do want to say, and it's not an excuse, but it is a reality that a lot of a lot of people don't appreciate that we, I think our FTE is 15, including me at the moment, we're a tiny team. We set up under lockdown conditions with a commissioner that was recruited to, you know, I came to Victoria at the start of the year. Many of us didn't meet the whole time through the year. Like our defined entities, we were struggling with COVID and trying to implement this brand-new legislation literally from scratch with 15 FTE or there abouts, sometimes it was 13 FTE from memory and so, you know, fair to say that there was there was a fair bit and we've had the, we've had the feedback and I noted it earlier that there was this kind of just-in-time approach to delivering resources to assist organisations and some of them were, you know, there were iterations that could have come out earlier and absolutely accept all of that criticism. It's absolutely fair and reasonable, but we were also fairly under resourced, through this for the for the job at hand. And that was no one's fault, I think we just didn't appreciate the job that that you know, the hugeness of the job that was going to be required of us and everyone else.
Leah Ruppanner: Can I just add one, Sarah Houston has this comment that I just want to push through before I know, Niki, we're probably going to end with you in a minute. But what she says ‘one thing that was really helpful to start with was the training provided on how to complete the templates. So as a suggestion, continued sessions like this as templates and indicators are being populated would have been, would, would have been, sorry, very beneficial.’ So just logging that through as one thing that worked, and something maybe to duplicate for the next year.
Niki Vincent: Yes, yeah.
Leah Ruppanner: And then just to say to you, I've studied COVID over the past two years and what it means for women, and I just want to say, validating everything that's coming through the emotion that's coming through the feelings of overwhelm. We're documenting that and women got knocked out. So, I'm saying that in compassion, and then also in solidarity, and then also we'll keep researching these things, so, now I’ll zip.
Niki Vincent: That's fantastic. You could have said more. I think we all feel that way, right. Yeah, thank you.
Leah Ruppanner : So I think we're at the end of our closing remarks. Niki, I just wanted to give you the opportunity, perhaps to, five minutes for reflections, thoughts or insights.
Niki Vincent: Oh, thank you. Thanks so much. Look, I just want to thank everyone, all of you that are participating and all of the panel members. I've learned a huge amount from today's session. I know, I know, Kate will feel similarly, the level of participation alone speaks to the goodwill, the engagement and the passion that that we've experienced in doing this. It's been an incredibly challenging experience, but an incredibly rewarding one as well. I think what from today, what I've learned, and I'm very excited about, in spite of all the anxieties and tensions expressed along the way, I'm really reassured about how the Act is creating interesting conversations and understanding about intersectionality and gender, that's, that will be beginning to shift culture, as has been raised over and over again, in the discussion is one of the things that for many organisations needs to shift.
I've, you know, there's obviously, a strong need for targeted and practical support for defined entities in an ongoing way and we will be focusing in this next 12 months on, on gender impact assessments, because we kind of focused our attention much more on data and gender, gender equality action plans, and now we need to focus on how organisations are going with their GIAs, but we won't take our foot off the accelerator around the data and the, and how to implement your gender equality action plans as well.
I can reassure you that in terms of the Act and expansion of the Act, going forward, the next cab off the rank will be to look at contractors and look at volunteers as, for potential inclusion. So, I've had those discussions with the Minister the way is open for us to explore those things. We have the Country Fire Authority that's conducting an audit, a workplace gender audit for their volunteers this year. So, they looked at their paid employees last year, submitted that in December. This year they're going to focus on their volunteers, and we're going to work with them to use that as a pilot for how we might include volunteers under the Act. And likewise, we've had fairly strong advocacy from the Australian Services Union around the use of, around the inclusion of contractors. And I know that was an issue that came up today.
We also, and I took on the disappointment about the limited scope around that it wasn't, the Act wasn't going to apply to other sectors, the business private sector, not-for-profit organisations. We are looking at the potential for being able to take voluntary, data voluntarily from some of those organisations. We've already had some requests and some questions about whether we can do that from organisations in the in the in the construction sector, which is great, there's interest from the not-for-profit sector. We have, as I said earlier, developed the new intersectionality resources, have a look at them, I would say they're absolutely fantastic. They still probably don't get to the actual nitty gritty of, you know, how do you, how do you collect this data and so forth and that's something that we want to expand even further. And I'll probably finish there because I found this really, really helpful and interesting, and I hope that you have and it's certainly given us a lot to, to go, to think about and to look forward, and I look forward to many more conversations like this. But I do want to just throw to Kate Farhall because yesterday we had approval from the Minister for our next round of grant funding. And I think that'll help respond to some of the issues raised today, So can I just get you to talk about the grants Kate, the next round?
Kate Farhall: Yeah sure. Thanks. So this is a, yeah 2022 grants round that will be opening next week hopefully. It’s all been a bit down to the wire but, and so we'll have five key areas of focus for this year that will primarily be focusing on taking that wonderful audit data that you all gave us and handing some of it over to research teams to look at particular intersections between different forms of disadvantage and discrimination. So, we have one priority area of focus looking at Aboriginal women, one looking at women with disability, one looking at the intersection of gender and rurality. We know lots about organisations are located outside of Melbourne and what particular challenges does that present? One looking at people with caring responsibilities, parents and those who are pregnant and looking at how gender intersects with those categories within our defined entities. And lastly, one looking at the intersection of gender and a non-English speaking background, which we don't actually we haven't collected data on. So that project is slightly different in that we won't be handing over our audit data to any researchers undertaking that one, but rather, asking them to go out and collect some data and analyse it for us. And in particular, those projects, we have asked researchers to take that data to analyse it, and then to go out and talk to people who have lived experience of, you know, those particular categories of disadvantage, so that we can sort of take that data and contextualise it with some qualitative work and then ask the researchers to come back to us tell us what they found what it means and you know, what we can do about it as a Commission in terms of their findings, but also some guidance and support for our defined entities as well. So hopefully, that'll all be coming down the line throughout this year, and those projects should wind up at the end of October. So hopefully, we'll have more to say on those topics at that point. Thank you.
Niki Vincent: Thanks Kate. We also have undertaken a piece of research on women of colour, gender, and women of colour this year and so we're about to get the research findings from that at the end of this month, which is why that's not included in the five projects for, for next year. So, we hope that we'll be able to use all of this data to help you, the defined entities and also help us to understand the issues more. We've just finished up a piece of work from some interns on Aboriginal data sovereignty as well, which I think is a very important issue.
Leah Ruppanner: I’ll close it out? Unless anyone else wants to unmute, I'll fill the silence. Thank you all for coming. It's been an awesome opportunity to be a part of the project. It's wonderful to have everyone here. We thank you the 205 people who are still here, three minutes after we've gone into your lunch break, but we're just really grateful for your participation, to work with the Commission and to share our research which will be available. Sorry, we'll have a little policy brief at some point that will be accessible, but we are grateful for the opportunity to share and thanks for your feedback and as Alysia said, we will incorporate all of it, look at the chat and as we integrate and move forward on this project. So thank you very much. And bye.
Lauren Ryan: Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.
[End of transcript]
Updated