About Victoria's Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector
The Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner was established under the Gender Equality Act 2020.
The Act was developed in response to recommendations of the 2016 Royal Commission into Family Violence, which identified gender inequality as a key driver of violence against women. The Act recognises that gender equality is also critical to workplace fairness, economic participation, organisational performance and the delivery of equitable policies, programs and services.
The Act applies to around 300 Victorian public sector organisations. This includes government departments, public health services, local councils, universities, TAFEs, water authorities, police and emergency services, courts and other public bodies.
It establishes a comprehensive framework for advancing gender equality through:
gender equality action plans
- biennial workplace gender audits and progress reports
- gender impact assessments on all public policies, programs and services
- regular public reporting and accountability.
Under the Act, duty holders are required to measure workplace gender equality, take action to address identified barriers, and demonstrate reasonable and material progress over time. They must also consider how gender inequality may be compounded by other forms of disadvantage and discrimination.
The Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector supports the Commissioner to implement the Act through education, guidance, compliance oversight, research, reporting and stakeholder engagement.
This report draws on data collected under the Act and forms part of Victoria’s broader transparency and accountability framework for workplace gender equality.
For more information about the Commission, the Act and previous reporting, see the Baseline report (2021).
How gender inequality shows up at work
Gender inequality in workplaces is rarely the result of a single policy, decision or behaviour. It emerges through a combination of workforce patterns, organisational practices, workplace cultures and broader social expectations about work, leadership and caring responsibilities.
Over recent decades, women’s participation in paid work has increased significantly. Yet systemic inequalities remain. Across Australia, women continue to be underrepresented in many senior leadership and decision-making roles, are more likely to work part time, and continue to undertake a greater share of unpaid caring responsibilities than men (ABS 2026; WGEA et al. 2026). Workplaces can both reflect and reinforce these broader patterns.
One way workplace gender inequality appears is through workforce composition. Women and men are often concentrated in different occupations, industries and levels of seniority. Women are more likely to work in caring, administrative and community service roles, while men remain overrepresented in many technical, operational and senior leadership positions. These patterns influence earnings, career progression and access to decision-making roles.
Gender inequality can also be shaped by workplace cultures and systems. Recruitment and promotion processes, access to flexible work, leadership pathways, workplace safety and the distribution of caring responsibilities can all influence employees’ experiences and opportunities at work.
For many employees, these factors interact. For example, unequal caring responsibilities can affect access to career development opportunities, leadership roles and higher earnings. Occupational gendered segregation can contribute to gender pay gaps. Experiences of sexual harassment or discrimination can affect workforce participation, wellbeing, and career progression.
Sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination at work disproportionately affect women and gender diverse people (AHRC 2025). These experiences can have significant impacts on health, wellbeing, workforce participation and career progression. They also undermine workplace culture and organisational performance (AHRC 2020; AHRC 2025).
Importantly, workplace gender inequality is not experienced in the same way by all people. Gender inequality can intersect with discrimination based on other characteristics and experiences, including Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, race and sexuality. These intersecting inequalities can create unique barriers and disadvantages for some employees.
Understanding how gender inequality operates within workplaces is essential for addressing it. This is why the Gender Equality Act focuses on a range of interconnected workplace indicators. Together, these indicators help organisations identify where inequalities exist, understand how they are connected, and target action where it is likely to have the greatest impact.
Measuring workplace gender inequality
Workplace gender inequality is complex. To understand where inequalities exist and how they can be addressed, the Gender Equality Act focuses on 7 workplace gender equality indicators:
- gender composition at all levels of the workforce
- gender composition of governing bodies
- gender pay gap
- sexual harassment in the workplace
- recruitment and promotion practices
- leave and flexibility
- gendered segregation within the workplace.
Duty holders are required to collect data and report on these indicators, identify barriers to gender equality, and take action to make reasonable and material progress over time. Where possible, the Act requires duty holders to collect data about additional attributes, such as Aboriginality and disability. This helps duty holders identify forms of intersectional gender inequality in their workplaces. Read more about intersectionality, and how the Commission used this data, in Appendix 1: Data and methods.
Each indicator captures a different dimension of workplace gender equality. However, the indicators are also closely connected. Changes in one area often influence outcomes in another.
For example, gender pay gaps are often shaped by workforce composition, recruitment and promotion pathways, gendered occupational and industrial segregation, and access to flexible work. Similarly, unequal caring responsibilities can influence career progression and leadership representation. Experiences of sexual harassment can affect employee wellbeing, workforce participation and retention, particularly in industries where women and gender-diverse people are underrepresented.
Considering the indicators together provides a more complete picture of workplace gender equality than any single measure alone.
Throughout this report, the indicators are examined both individually and in combination. Together, they reveal where progress is occurring, where barriers remain, and where organisations, industries and policymakers need to focus future effort.
Measuring gender inequality outside the binary
The Commission collects data about gender across 4 gender categories:
- women
- men
- people of self-described gender
- prefer not to say.
The Commission advises duty holders to collect gender data in line with employees’ and board members’ gender identities. The categories of ‘women’ and ‘men’ are inclusive of trans women and trans men. However, some trans people may prefer to use different terms to describe themselves.
The Commission uses the category of ‘people of self-described gender’ to ensure that employees and board members who do not identify as women or men are included but are also able to use their preferred terminology. The Commission encourages duty holders to ensure employees and board members can use their preferred language to describe their gender, whether that is non-binary, genderqueer, agender, gender fluid or another term. Duty holders should record this preferred language in their internal systems to accurately reflect individuals’ gender identities and respect their preferred language.
When it comes to reporting, duty holders must use one category of ‘self-described gender’ so that both the organisation and the Commissioner can meaningfully analyse that data. This approach is designed to maximise the impact of the data, while still allowing individual people to use their preferred language to express their gender.
The People matter survey uses the terms ‘non-binary’ and ‘gender diverse’ to capture information about people who identify outside the gender binary.
This report uses all 3 terms (people of self-described gender, non-binary and gender diverse) to discuss the experiences of people who identify outside the gender binary. Read more about data limitations for this group in Appendix 1: Data and methods.
The Victorian public sector context
The Victorian public sector is one of the state’s largest employers, with public sector workers making up around 12% of Victoria’s labour force. It delivers essential services that affect the lives of Victorians every day. This includes health care, education, emergency services, local government, transport, justice and community and cultural services.
Because of its size, reach and influence, the public sector has an important role to play in advancing workplace gender equality. Progress within the public sector can improve outcomes for hundreds of thousands of employees directly, while also demonstrating approaches that may be adopted more broadly across the Victorian workforce.
The Victorian public sector is not a single workforce. It encompasses around 300 organisations operating across diverse industries, labour markets and operating environments. These organisations vary significantly in size, workforce composition, occupational profiles and service delivery responsibilities. As a result, the barriers and opportunities associated with workplace gender equality differ across industries and organisations.
Some industries have long histories of gendered occupational segregation, with women and men concentrated in different roles and levels of seniority. Other industries face workforce shortages, highly specialised labour markets, regional recruitment challenges or operational demands that shape how work is organised. These differences influence both the nature of workplace gender inequality and the strategies most likely to address it.
Workplace gender equality outcomes are shaped by a range of interconnected factors, including workforce composition, gendered occupational segregation, leadership representation, workplace culture, recruitment and promotion practices, caring responsibilities, industrial arrangements and broader labour market conditions.
Industrial agreements are an important mechanism for advancing workplace gender equality. They can accelerate progress by embedding measures such as paid parental leave, flexible work arrangements, reproductive health leave and other provisions that support equitable workforce participation and career progression. However, some industrial agreements can also constrain progress. In some workplaces, they reduce organisational flexibility, limit transparency, make it harder to collect and use workforce data, or restrict the practical options available to address structural drivers of inequality, such as workplace sexual harassment and gender pay gaps.
This report uses the term ‘public sector’ to describe all duty holders under the Gender Equality Act. However, the Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner is not the only public sector regulator in Victoria. The Victorian Public Sector Commission (VPSC) is the key body that supports and monitors public sector performance in Victoria. The group of organisations that report to VPSC is different to the group of duty holders under the Gender Equality Act. The Act covers local government organisations, universities and library corporations, which are not under the remit of VPSC. VPSC collects data from public sector organisations with fewer than 50 employees that are not duty holders under the Gender Equality Act. These differences can lead to differences between analyses from VPSC and the Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner.
Updated