[00:05.8]
A gender
impact assessment is a way of thinking about our policies, programs and services that have a direct
and significant impact on the public and looking at the ways that we can
make sure that they are more gender equal, that they address gender inequality,
and that they don't inadvertently discriminate against people
without meaning to in the way that they're delivered
and experienced by our students.
[00:29.2]
My name's Anthony Hines,
and I work at Melbourne Polytechnic as the Inclusion, Respect
and Equality Lead. Melbourne Polytechnic is a TAFE
and we also deliver higher education courses as well. We had a security incident
a couple of years ago that had some particular
kind of gendered implications, so as one of the corrective actions
we said, 'let's conduct a gender impact assessment on security,
looking at it through a gendered lens.' My name's Karen Cook.
[00:58.4]
I'm the Manager of Student Services
here at Melbourne Polytechnic. So what we had to do was actually take
some time to get the right people into the room and to hear their stories
and to hear what the impact was from them, and all these points of view was like,
well, okay, what are we going to do
to bring that together?
[01:14.7]
Because if our key focus is student
safety, then that's where we need to come from. The process
then supported building out the resources and the actions
that we were going to take. As I spoke with them, lights went on that, oh,
there are actually other people, and they would suggest
"oh you should also talk to so and so" so we ended up with a larger group
and a much broader consultation and more inclusive
and representative consultation so that led me to have a broader
and more diverse set of voices which I think led to a more quality
gender impact assessment outcome.
[01:49.4]
The process was really helpful because
it made us stop and think more broadly. I think we're all involved in, "okay,
that looks like it's the problem, let's quickly jump in and fix it", and the gender impact assessment process doesn't let you do that. It forces you
to kind of come back, rethink, reframe and really understand what you're dealing with
before you go straight to solution mode.
[02:11.5]
So one of the surprising things that we found was that people were not aware
of a number of the services that the security team
were able to provide. As a result of that, the security team
are looking at introducing safety zones to our different campuses,
and they're prioritising the selection of those based on the data that we used
as part of the gender impact assessment, and we're working with the security team
to have different guidelines that will enable them to have
a more empathic and nuanced approach to interacting with, especially different
women from different backgrounds.
[02:46.6]
Another thing that I'll say is that,
you know, GIAs are worth doing well, they're worth doing the in-depth analysis,
but that means it's good to really think about the policies, programs and services
that have the greatest impact on the public
because they do take time and effort, and you want to get
the return on investment, so think about the things that have
the greatest impact on the public.
[03:09.1]
All of those things
contribute to making Melbourne Poly a really safe, supportive environment
for staff and students.
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