Embedding gender impact assessments into your organisation

GIA Champions

Call for staff who are passionate about gender equality and have completed GIAs to be your GIA champions. These people can share their knowledge and learnings with other staff doing GIAs. This could be a good leadership development opportunity for staff in addition to their current role.

Subscribe to the Commission’s newsletter

Encourage staff to subscribe to the Commission’s monthly newsletter to get updates and resources on GIAs. This will help keep GIAs top of mind and build knowledge.

Internal GIA working groups

Consider setting up an internal GIA working group. Working groups create a space to share learnings, identify opportunities and solutions. This group could be made up of your GIA champions or staff that are already working on gender equality. It could be a group made up of representatives from different teams to support the rollout of GIAs and also the implementation of your Gender Equality Action Plan.

Gender Equality communities of practice

Joining a community of practice (CoP) will help staff who are leading gender equality work to connect with staff in similar roles in other organisations and share information and ideas.

The Commission works with CoPs to support GIAs and assist entities in meeting their obligations under the Act. A number of these are industry-specific CoPs that have been set up by defined entities. The Communities of Practice page on our website provides details of each CoP, including membership, meeting frequency and how to join a CoP in your sector.

Set performance goals

Consider including a GIA goal in staff professional development plans. Setting performance or development goals for staff can support GIA work and ensure accountability for obligations under the Act.

Job descriptions

Include the responsibility to undertake GIAs in position descriptions. Accountability for overseeing GIAs and the responsibility to support the organisation to meet its obligations under the Act could also be included in manager’s position descriptions. This makes the role’s expectations clear and builds buy-in from the start.

Mandate of key committees

Include GIAs in the mandate of relevant key committees. This will ensure an ongoing commitment to meet obligations. It will also serve to remind staff of the importance and need to complete GIAs.

Distribute CGEPS resources through regular internal messaging

We have created an online Gender Impact Assessment Hub. It contains useful products, toolkits and templates for GIA work. These resources will support you and your organisation to complete GIAs and meet the obligations under the Act. These products could also be distributed to staff and used for internal GIA communications.

When sharing these resources and information, it is important to focus on the ‘why’. Talk about the benefits of doing GIAs. Try to ensure GIA messaging communicates a culture of continuous improvement and learning. This will help address any fears staff may have about ‘getting it wrong’.

Add GIAs to the agenda

Include GIAs as a regular agenda item at staff meetings. This is especially important for meetings at the organisational or leadership level. It will ensure accountability for GIAs across leaders and staff. Holding these conversations will also normalise and embed GIAs into business as usual.

Develop case studies

Convert completed GIAs into case studies. Case studies show how GIAs have been applied to real-life policies, programs, or services within your organisation. It will be particularly useful for staff to see how policies, programs or services were developed or varied to:

• meet the needs of people of different genders
• promote gender equality
• address gender inequality.

The Commission has compiled a range of GIA case studies that show how different organisations have completed GIAs and the steps and actions taken as a result of the assessment. It may be helpful to refer to these when writing your own case studies.

Celebrate successes

Showing that your organisation values GIAs will encourage active buy-in from staff. This will also reinforce the importance of conducting GIAs. You can show this value by recognising and sharing wins. Try spotlighting GIA successes at all-staff meetings or within internal communications. Showcase and celebrate GIA work, the actions taken and how this work promotes gender equality.

Instead of developing new workflows, build the steps of GIAs into existing processes and checklists used by staff, such as those used for developing or reviewing policies, programs, or services. Doing so will help alleviate some of the concerns about GIAs adding to existing workloads.

Step two of the GIA process calls for evidence gathering and stakeholder consultation. If your organisation has existing community consultation processes, you can use the guidance in the GIA toolkit to apply a gender lens to these processes. This means you will be better prepared to undertake inclusive community consultation that represents diverse perspectives to inform your GIAs.

Include GIAs into briefing or approval templates. Not only will this lessen the impact of adding to executive approval processes, it may also later help strengthen executive support of the recommendations arising from the GIA.

Develop a decision tool matrix, checklist, or flowchart to help your organisation assess and determine which policies, programs and services will require a GIA. These steps can help staff consider the scope and assess if the impacts of the policy, program or service are direct and significant for the public. This will ensure that your staff and the organisation are doing GIAs on public facing policies, programs, and services that will promote gender equality and address gender inequality.

Identify who will be responsible for approving GIA recommendations. This could be a senior executive or multiple approvers. You could develop a governance framework to outline who has sign-off or input in making these decisions. Your organisation may already have existing processes or channels that staff can use to get GIA recommendations approved.

Identify and engage the right entity and team responsible for doing the GIA. This is important as some organisations may outsource parts of their policies, programs and services.

For example, a governing agency may subcontract another organisation to deliver a program. Here, those responsible for the program design must complete the GIA. In this case, it will be the governing agency, not the subcontractor delivering the program. If both organisations are defined entities, they must both still uphold their duty to promote gender equality.

Encourage an ‘if not, why not?’ approach towards GIAs. Even GIAs on policies, programs, and services with smaller impacts on the public can lead to positive change for people of all genders. This will help build the confidence and skills of staff in doing GIAs.

For staff with limited experience, it can be hard to understand how a policy, program or service may reinforce gender inequality. To support such staff, you may wish to consider providing introductory gender equality training as a starting point.

The following training is available to help build essential gender equality knowledge:

• Women’s Health Victoria offer a free Introduction to Gender Equality course. This course will help develop foundational knowledge on gender equality.
• RMIT University offer a free TAFE short Course in Gender Equity. This is Australia’s first accredited gender equity qualification. The course will help participants to apply, promote and support gender equity in their workplace. This course is part of the Victorian Government’s ‘Free TAFE’ short course initiative. This means that some participants may be eligible for a government subsidy.

Include GIAs as mandatory e-learning as part of onboarding new staff or when you conduct all-staff training. This will provide all staff with essential knowledge about GIAs and normalise GIA work as business as usual.

Consider key points at which new policies, programs or services will be developed (for example, business planning or budget periods). Consider tailoring communications and training during these periods to include GIA elements.

Work with other organisations that are also doing GIAs. Tap in to existing networks or working groups in which learnings and resources are shared. Such groups may assist in finding solutions to tricky GIA issues.

Create a centralised online hub for your staff to access GIA resources, report on GIAs and the results of GIAs. Previous GIAs may have information that is useful when conducting new GIAs, particularly data sources and recommendations.

There may be committees and working groups already established in the organisation that are accountable for compliance, monitoring and evaluation. You may be able to add the responsibility to meeting the Act’s obligations, monitoring and evaluation of GIAs into the terms of reference for these bodies.

Such groups may include:

• the Board or Executive Management Committee of your organisation
• the Quality, Compliance and Risk Committee
• the Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Failure to undertake GIAs creates risk. For example, if you don’t do GIAs, your organisation:

• won’t comply with the obligations under the Act
• will undermine your commitment to gender equality
• will risk how the public sees your organisation
• may perpetuate existing gender inequalities through your work
• may not be delivering policies, programs and services that are effective for the community.

Making leaders and staff aware of these risks, and helping them understand how to mitigate them can help create buy-in.

Add GIAs to your organisation’s current evaluation and compliance frameworks. This will help you when developing or reviewing policies, programs and services. It will also help you to communicate expectations to your staff about the standard of GIAs your organisation requires. This will reduce uncertainty when undertaking the GIA process.

For more information, please see the Compliance page on our website.

Good record keeping is important to meeting your obligations when it comes time for progress reporting. Consider establishing a reporting mechanism within the organisation or determine how your reporting process owner can capture GIAs completed through an existing reporting process. Having an internal reporting process in place will ensure that the information that is reported to the Commission is accurate.

For more information, please see the Progress Reporting page on our website.