A gender impact assessment will help you analyse the impacts of policies, programs, and services on people of different genders, and consider whether changes need to be made to ensure you are not creating or reinforcing inequalities. This involves: Identifying the issues your policy, program or service is trying to address. Collecting evidence to better understand how different people, including people of diverse genders, access, use or are impacted by your policy, program or service. Evaluating options to promote gender equality. Making recommendations to alter the policy, program or service as needed to address or accommodate different needs and experiences.
Throughout this process, you should think about how the experience of gender inequality differs across the community, due to other aspects of a person’s identity – such as if they are Aboriginal, LGBTIQ+, live with disability, or have different language and cultural backgrounds.
For example, Radhika works for a rural mental health service. She is developing a Disaster Recovery Framework to assist families in the area with mental health concerns. Radhika must first define the issues and set the priorities that the Program is trying to address. Radhika doesn’t do this alone – she meets with her team, as well as individuals from other teams who have diverse experiences. Without applying a gender lens, the group might assume that youth mental health issues from feelings of loss, hopelessness and isolation will be the most pressing priority.
Applying a gender lens, the group broadens the issue to consider: What are the gendered differences in how people experience disasters? How do needs and priorities regarding disaster recovery differ according to gender? How do other intersecting factors, such as age, disability, and ethnicity, influence mental health needs and priorities?
Radhika must then use data, research, and stakeholder engagement to understand how gender and other factors might influence these issues – that is, the program context. Radhika does not have a significant amount of data available. She arranges meetings with local support services in the area.
They tell her about the high rates of family violence experienced during disasters and the mental health assistance required by women and children as a result. The barriers that culturally and linguistically diverse community groups face when accessing mental health support. The issues for people living with disability, including being unable to access personal care workers or support networks. The impacts of isolation, anxiety and poverty on the mental health of elderly women.
Radhika must then develop program options and weigh up their gendered impacts. The first option the team considers targets mental health exclusively in young people. The team reflects on what they have learned, realising this approach does not address how mental health interacts with gender and other factors. As this option does not address the perspectives and priorities of people of different genders, the team rates the overall gender impact of Option 1 as negative.
Identifying areas to promote gender equality and applying lessons learned from consultation, the second option Radhika’s team develops focuses on a broader range of post-disaster community mental health issues. In this option, delivery will be targeted to more community members in the form of community mental wellness workshops, with interpreters. The team then discusses the gendered costs and benefits of this option, including that: Workshops run in community spaces may not be attended by women who have experienced family violence, elderly women who are in care facilities or people with disability. Community workshops should decrease feelings of isolation. Interpreting services will help address any language barriers, encouraging participation by culturally and linguistically diverse women. The team rates the overall gender impact of this option as positive, as it considers how the experience of gender inequality differs across the community.
Radhika must make a recommendation for the development of the program, based on the options analysis. It is important that when Radhika and her team undertake their options analysis and make a recommendation, they do not default to the least costly option, or the option which benefits the most people, because this may exclude the most marginalised members of the community. Radhika recommends that the organisation progress with Option 2. She also recommends that the program provide on-site mental health assessments and workshops at local women’s groups, aged care facilities and youth and other community centres. These will be streamed online with the assistance of volunteer interpreters.
Radhika and her team did not treat the gender impact assessment process as a ‘tick and flick’ exercise. Instead, they took time to consider all the issues and gather information. By assessing the affects the program might have on people of different genders and considering how it could be developed to better support their community, the team created a program that was more responsive, inclusive, and effective.
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