Overview

About

This guidance is for organisations that have obligations as duty holders under the Gender Equality Act 2020(opens in a new window) (the Act).

The Act requires duty holders to submit a progress report every 2 years. The next progress report is due on 1 May 2026.

Monitoring, measuring and reporting on progress allows both you and the Commissioner to evaluate the success of your gender equality action plan (GEAP) and gender impact assessments (GIA).

This will help you understand whether your actions are achieving positive change towards workplace gender equality.

Why this work is important

Under the Act, you are required to report on progress to the Commissioner.

Reporting on progress helps your organisation:

• stay on track
• share knowledge and lessons learned
• celebrate progress made towards gender equality

The pace of progress

GEAPs are 4-year action plans. Strategies and measures may have short, medium and long-term implementation plans.
Progress is not always linear and immediate.

This means your organisation may not yet have seen big numerical shifts in data on the workplace gender equality indicators.

The progress report is an opportunity to explain these challenges. The Commissioner will take this into account when assessing progress reports for compliance with the Act.

What you need to do

Completing your progress report can take time.

Start collecting the information you need to report on progress as soon as possible.

Ideally, your organisation established a monitoring system during GEAP implementation to collect the information you need.

For example, this might include a GIA reporting system that collects the required information throughout the reporting cycle.

Before submitting your progress report, ensure it complies with the Gender Equality Act.(opens in a new window)

Use the checklist at the end of this guidance to check you have included all the required information.

This guidance corresponds with the 2026 progress report template.

For an accessible version of this guidance and/or template, please email enquiries@genderequalitycommission.vic.gov.au

Requirements under the Act

Progress reports must address¹:

1. Gender impact assessments (GIA): report on the policies, programs and services that were subject to a GIA and the outcomes of each GIA.
2. Workplace gender equality indicators: demonstrate your organisation’s progress in relation to the indicators.
3. Gender equality action plan (GEAP): report your organisation’s progress in relation to the strategies listed in your GEAP.
4. Gender equality targets and quotas: demonstrate your organisation’s progress towards meeting any prescribed gender equality targets or quotas².

Currently, there are no prescribed gender equality targets or quotas in place. So, you are not required to report on this in the current round of progress report.

Privacy and confidentiality

It is important to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of your workforce is maintained throughout the progress report process.

Information provided to the Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner will be managed in line with relevant privacy laws.

Duty holders (defined entities) are responsible for complying with relevant privacy laws, including the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic) (PDP Act).

Key dates

You must submit your progress report by 1 May 2026 via the Commissioner's reporting platform.

You will submit your GEAP at the same time. Read more in the 2026 GEAP guidance.

The relevant period for this progress report is:

• 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2025 for universities
• 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2025 for all other duty holders.

Different components of a progress report may have different reporting periods that fall within the relevant period.

The relevant period is the time covered by a progress report, as specified in the Act. A reporting period is any specified period within the relevant period where the Commissioner requests particular information.

Reporting periods for each component will be explicit throughout this guidance.

The figures below sets out the relevant period for duty holders and the reporting periods for different obligations.

Footnotes

1. As outlined in section 19 of the Act.
2. When developing your progress report, duty holders must think about legal obligations they may have under Commonwealth and State legislation and industrial instruments, including but not limited to: the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and other Commonwealth workplace relations legislation; the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) and the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic); the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) and the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth); enterprise agreements, workplace determinations and modern awards.

Using the 2026 progress report template and guidance

You must use the template provided by the Commissioner. This is a requirement of the Gender Equality Regulations 2020.

You can download the 2026 progress report template from the right-hand side of this guidance (online).

This guidance will help your organisation complete and submit a progress report.

There are required and recommended items to include in each section of the progress report. You must include the required items. The recommended items are strongly encouraged.

Supporting documents will not be accepted. All information must be included in the template.

If you would like to include additional information, you may do this in the ‘Any other additions or comments’ section at the end of the template.

Use the checklist at the end of this guidance to ensure your progress report complies with the Act.

The appendices to this document include advice for changed or new entities(opens in a new window).

Designed version of your progress report

You may create a designed version of your progress report to publish on your website. You do not need to submit this version to the Commissioner.
A designed version can include additional information not required by the Commissioner.

However, you must include all information required by the Commissioner and you must not alter the required content you submitted to the Commissioner (you may fix any spelling or grammatical errors).

Changes since 2023 progress reports

Cover page

The cover page is new in 2026. Most of the cover page is recommended.

The attestation is required. Your head of organisation (CEO or equivalent) must attest that:

• they approve the progress report
• your organisation has completed all relevant gender impact assessments under the Gender Equality Act 2020.

If not, they must explain why.

Gender impact assessments

The GIA exemptions section is new. Any organisation with a permitted reason for not reporting on any GIAs must explain this.

Actions taken as a result of the GIA and no actions taken are split into separate columns. This is to improve clarity compared to 2023.

You are now required to describe how intersectionality was considered, or why it was not considered. In 2023, this was recommended only. This reflects that the Act requires that intersectionality is considered where practicable when undertaking GIAs. If you haven’t taken intersectionality into account in the GIAs you have completed to date (or haven’t recorded this) then you can explain this in the progress report template. This will not impact your compliance on this aspect of the report in 2026. For GIAs completed from 1 July 2025 onwards, you should ensure information is captured about how intersectionality was considered (or why this was not practicable) and then report this in future progress reports.

It is recommended that you explain the gendered impacts the GIA uncovered and describe any actions taken designed to address intersectional inequalities (that is, where gender inequality is compounded by other forms of discrimination).

Progress against the indicators

The numerical data from your audit and the description of your progress (or not) are split out for clarity.

You are now required to discuss the factors affecting your progress (in 2023, this was recommended only).

GEAP strategies

Reporting on the implementation of your strategies has been significantly streamlined for 2026.

You must now list any relevant strategies against each indicator and you can provide information about delayed or cancelled strategies in a single question.

This has replaced the line-item updates required in 2023.

In addition to telling the Commissioner about how your GEAP is resourced, there are new recommended GEAP items that let you describe how your GEAP implementation went so you are reflecting and improving on your first GEAP, as you start your second.