- Published:
- Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 9:00 am
The Commission has released its State of Gender Equality in Victoria’s Public Sector 2026 report. It provides the clearest picture yet of gender equality across the public sector workforce.
Commissioner Dr Niki Vincent said:
Public sector workers are our nurses, train drivers, teachers, police officers and firefighters. They design the policies and services we all rely on, from water and public spaces to healthcare. When they work in safe, fair workplaces, with genuine opportunity to progress regardless of their gender, they can do their best work. And when they do, Victoria benefits.
The report finds that women's representation in senior leadership has increased over 5 years. Further gains are emerging in traditionally men-concentrated occupations and in men’s uptake of flexible work and parental leave. But more work is needed to reduce gender pay gaps and strengthen sexual harassment prevention and reporting.
The report uses workplace gender audit data from around 300 government departments, authorities, public health services, emergency services, councils and universities. These organisations represent around 500,000 public sector employees across Victoria. Since the Gender Equality Act 2020 took effect, mandatory audits have been submitted in 2021, 2023 and 2025.
The Commission has used this 5-year evidence base to track progress against 7 workplace gender equality indicators:
- workforce composition
- governing bodies
- pay
- sexual harassment
- recruitment and promotion
- leave and flexibility
- occupational segregation.
Gender equality is a matter of good governance. Meeting obligations under the Gender Equality Act is the starting point, not the finish line. Real change comes when equality is embedded in how organisations lead, manage and deliver services, with accountability that starts at the top.
More women reaching senior leadership
The report reveals women held 57.3% of senior leadership roles in 2025, up from 53.1% in 2023. With women making up around two-thirds of the public sector workforce, the increase moves senior leadership closer to proportional representation. Four out of 11 public sector industries reached proportional representation of women in leadership, up from 2 in 2023.
Women’s representation in men-concentrated occupation groups increased
Women’s representation also increased across several traditionally men-concentrated occupations. This includes machinery operators and drivers, technicians and trade workers, and labourers.
The transport sector shifted from “highly” to “moderately” men-concentrated. This shift reflects sustained effort to support women into transport careers.
Pay gap holds firm, and widens at the top
Pay gaps narrowed in 7 of the sector's 11 industries. This includes police and emergency services, where the gap fell from 18.1% to 12.0%.
But the sector-wide gender pay gap has not narrowed since 2021. Every industry still has a pay gap in favour of men. The gap remains widest in women-concentrated industries and occupations such as public health care (29%) and community and personal services (24.1%). In public health care, women are more likely to hold roles paid around $100,000, while men are more likely to hold roles paid above $200,000.
The picture is similar, and more pronounced, at the top. The mean total remuneration pay gap among senior leaders widened, even as representation grew. This is because women’s growing share of senior roles skewed toward the more junior, lower-paid tiers of leadership. The highest-paid executive positions remained men-concentrated.
Getting more women into senior leadership is important, especially in male-concentrated and more highly paid industries. Then we need to make sure those women continue to progress into the most senior and highly paid roles. That's why we need to look at both representation and remuneration. Either one on its own gives us an incomplete picture.
Right now, more women are reaching senior leadership, but they are landing at the junior, lower-paid end of that tier. That’s why the senior leader gender pay gap widened.
Sexual harassment: rates unchanged, reporting gap a concern
Sexual harassment experience rates have remained largely unchanged since 2021. In 2025, they were 6.4% for women (an estimated 21,000 women) and 3.5% for men (an estimated 6000 men). Rates are highest, and rose more, for non-binary and gender-diverse employees, climbing from 12.7% in 2021 to 16.9% in 2025 (representing an estimated 600 people). The report also identifies continued higher experience rates for First Nations women, young women and women with disability.
The report highlights a significant reporting gap. Many employees say they reported sexual harassment, but those disclosures do not always make it into formal organisational reporting systems. This means organisations may be underestimating the scale of the issue and missing opportunities to prevent harm.
All workplace sexual harassment is unacceptable. It's a workplace health and safety hazard, not simply a complaints issue. The gap between what employees experience and what actually gets formally reported is a serious problem that organisations need to address urgently.
Flexible work and parental leave among men gathers pace
Across the public sector, the length of men’s uptake of parental leave improved in 6 of 11 industries between 2021 and 2025. This signals a gradual shift in care and workplace norms. The strongest increases were in community and cultural services, where men’s uptake of parental leave was up 4.2 weeks. Universities and water and land management both saw an increase of 3.6 weeks. TAFE and other education saw a 2.1-week increase.
At the sector level, men’s use of flexible work also increased over the same period, from 14.9% to 19.6%.
As Commissioner, my focus is on the inequalities that cause the most harm and the areas with the greatest opportunity for meaningful change. That includes closing gender pay gaps, strengthening sexual harassment prevention and response, and improving the gender-equitable division of care among public sector workers.
Lasting workplace and cultural change is rarely immediate or linear. It takes sustained effort, consistent leadership and a clear focus on the outcomes that matter for workers and the Victorians they serve.
Read the full report: State of Gender Equality in Victoria’s Public Sector 2026
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