Gender impact assessments

To meet the GIA progress reporting obligations, please use the progress report template and refer to worksheet 1 GIA.

What you need to do

In this video, Senior Policy Advisor George (they/them) shows you how to fill in your GIA progress report.

Requirements

The Act requires organisations to conduct a GIA when developing or reviewing any policy, program, or service that has a direct and significant impact on the public. As part of your progress report, you must identify each policy, program or service that was subject to a GIA during the relevant period.

You will need to include the following information in your progress report:

• Title (column B): The name of the policy, program, or service that was the subject of the GIA.
• Subject (column C): Whether the subject of the assessment was a policy, program, or service.
• Description (Column D): A brief description of the policy, program, or service.
• Status (Column E): Whether it was a new policy, program or service, or one up for review.

You can find definitions of policies, programs and services in our glossary of terms.

Step 1

You must confirm in column F if actions were taken as a result of your GIA to develop or vary each policy, program or service.

If actions have been taken, select ‘yes’ from the drop-down menu. There may be cases where several recommendations were made but not all actions were implemented. In this case you should still mark ‘yes’ if some actions have been taken.

If no actions were taken, select ‘no action taken’ from the drop-down menu. This may include cases where recommendations were made and were not implemented, and therefore no action was taken.

Step 2

Describe in column G the actions taken to develop or vary the particular policy, program or service as a result of the GIA in order to:

• Meet the needs of people of different genders; and
• Promote gender equality; and
• Address gender inequality.

You will need to describe what actions have been taken after the GIA was completed to achieve the above goals. These actions may vary in scale, but even minor changes should be reported to demonstrate your work.

If you used the templates from the GIA Toolkit when conducting your GIA, it may be helpful to refer to information you captured in Template 4 – ‘Making recommendations’, where these recommendations were implemented.

If you have reported ‘no action taken’, in column F, you should describe in column G why no action was taken to develop or vary the policy, program or service that was the subject of the GIA.

Explainer: 'Actions taken'

When reporting on GIAs, it is important to focus on the real change GIAs are making to promote gender equality. This is why you are required to report on the ‘actions taken’ to develop or vary policies, programs and services, or the reason that actions were not taken.

We recognise this may not always be straightforward. In some cases, the GIA process may occur in stages and over an extended period, and actions may take time to be decided.

You should only report on GIAs in this progress report where it is clear how the policy, program or service will be, or has been, changed as a result of the GIA process, or if it is clear that no change will be made. This could be due to GIA recommendations being approved, partially approved, or rejected by the person responsible for making these decisions.

If these decisions have not been made yet, then you should not report on the GIA in this reporting period. Instead, hold off on reporting on the GIA until the reporting period in which they are made.

Please see the below table for example scenarios:

Organisations have existing obligations under relevant privacy legislation that you must meet when conducting work under the Act. Further, you must not report on a policy, program or service if it would disclose confidential or prohibited information.

When identifying a policy, program or service that was subject to GIA or reporting on actions taken, you should determine if this would disclose any information that is confidential. This may include the following:

• Information that would cause the policy, program, or service to be considered exempt within the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth).
• Information of which disclosure is prohibited or restricted by another Act or enactment; or
• Information about any other confidential matter; or
• Information that is considered Cabinet in Confidence (for Victorian Public Service departments) such as a business case that was not funded.

For further advice, organisations should seek legal advice, or contact the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC) which also has further information about exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act.

Recommendations

When undertaking GIAs, the Act asks defined entities to take into account, where practicable, how gender inequality can be compounded by disadvantage or discrimination that people may experience based on other personal attributes. This is sometimes calledintersectional gender equality.

For many organisations this is a new practice. Documenting and reporting on any approach taken will support capability-building across all defined entities.

We recommend you use column H of the template to confirm whether intersectional gender inequality was considered in your GIA, and explain in column I how you did this.