Introduction to Gender Impact Assessments Training

Summary

The training session led by Women's Health in the South East delves into the necessity and execution of Gender Impact Assessments (GIA) within organizations, especially in light of the Gender Equality Act enforced by the Victorian government. The trainers stress the importance of acknowledging gender disparities at work and emphasize creating equality as part of organizational policies, highlighting the SDG5 goal of gender equality from the United Nations. Through various stages of the training, participants are encouraged to challenge assumptions, analyze existing policies, and foster the implementation of gender inclusivity in workplace practices, service delivery, and organizational structures. The session also explores equipping entities with tools to manage supplier diversity, navigating cultural sensitivities, and the importance of a strategic approach toward gender equality, involving learning, partnerships, and gradual change.

Highlights

• Learn to apply a gender lens in daily work activities, focusing on equality and inclusivity. 🧐
• Recognize the need for continuous improvement and the role of intersectional analysis in workplace policies. 🔍
• Engage in a learning journey expecting incremental changes in gender equality practices. 📚
• Explore partnerships and collaborations to enhance supplier diversity and adaptability. 🤝
• Understand the barriers and potential resistance to social change, planning accordingly. 👀

Key Takeaways

• Understanding gender disparities within organizations is crucial for social change. 🌍
• GIAs are essential for promoting gender equality in various areas like service delivery. 🔍
• Training focuses on the SDG5 goal emphasizing gender equality as a human right. 👫
• Practical steps include identifying blind spots and challenging existing assumptions. 🕵️‍♂️
• Taking deliberate steps towards inclusivity and involving all genders is strategic. 🔄

Overview

Gender Impact Assessments are a fundamental aspect of evolving workplace equality, as outlined in a training session by Women's Health in the South East. This session explicates the structured process of applying GIAs to policies and programs, aiming for a fairer, more inclusive work environment. It's about transforming the intersectional gender dynamics within workplaces to ensure equal opportunity for all employees, acknowledging existing disparities, and gradually implementing strategic changes.

The training underscores the necessity of raising awareness on gender diversity and challenging current assumptions that hinder equality. With a focus on SDG5, the trainers advise organizations to adopt policies that not only recognize gender equality as a global human right but also translate these methods into actionable strategies in workplace practices and community engagements. The dialogue includes discussions on managing potential pushback and building inclusive practices even in traditionally male-dominated or cultural-sensitive environments.

Participants are encouraged to engage with supplier diversity, exploring incremental yet impactful changes over time. The session outlines a roadmap for organizations to systematically integrate gender perspectives into everyday business activities, stressing collaboration with external partners for broader educational and resource support. Applying a gender lens becomes not just a regulatory compliance action but a step towards fostering a more equitable workplace and societal norm.

Introduction to Gender Impact Assessments Training Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 there's already a lot of strengths that smct have to implement the gia process the gia process is being asked of public sector entities by the victorian government due to the implementation of the gender equality act and i know that there is a project underway for what that means internally all right called a gender equality action plan and you have submitted your workplace gender gender audit now someone referred to how
• 00:30 - 01:00 this can work with my people internally whilst this is a deliberate external trans external ask so a gia is asking you to look externally right it will have an effect on how you work with your people to do that but if you're already doing those things that you already suggested which is consultation etc it's it's my perspective is it is the biggest thing you're going to need to do is to raise their awareness about gender equality
• 01:00 - 01:30 and the biggest thing and the starting point to do that is to say why does it matter it matters on a global scale this is sdg5 from the united nations development goals which i know you're all aware of but what they absolutely know is that creating equality and ending discrimination recognizing the value of care and domestic work participation in um
• 01:30 - 02:00 leadership universal access what we actually know is that these things are a fundamental human right if you look at this sentence i want you to replace the world the word world with smct so it'd say gender equality is not only a fundamental human right but a necessary foundation for a peaceful prosperous and sustainable southern metropolitan cemeteries trust
• 02:00 - 02:30 that's actually the why and the evidence of it is pretty clear this is this is i don't know if you can see that can you see that do you want me to expand it a bit this is actually a scorecard in the world economic forum of the latest global gender gap right this is where australia is and hopefully you can see where i've highlighted we're really good at educating everyone not really
• 02:30 - 03:00 there's there's still a significant part of australia's population that needs to be educated more but from a gender expect uh perspective what you can see is that lower highlight says that we're we're pretty good at educating men and women or all genders right but what happens is our participation rate in the workforce and in the economy and society drops and over the last few years what's actually happened is that australia has dropped from being quite
• 03:00 - 03:30 high globally inequality to now where we are which is 50 50th in the world quite significant so the reason we say this is important is actually because at the end of the day it actually creates to better better economic better productivity but also better social and community cohesion and we know that really at the moment because of the pandemic the pandemic has
• 03:30 - 04:00 not caused inequality it's actually revealed it right now there's some statistics and data about what it is actually reveal from an equality perspective i want to acknowledge that this is looking at gender in a binary so men and women but what we know more and more that's my grandfather clock um but what we know now is that um the gender is a is a spectrum that that it's more than one of the binary so just forgive me that i'm going to talk to that for the moment
• 04:00 - 04:30 there's some statistics there about the decline in workforce participation the increase in mental health we've got some local government areas at the moment that reporting 60 of women have anxiety and depression rates we we've got high levels of displacement for the workforce of women because what we know is that they had to choose between care and paid work um we also know that there is increasing realization of the the taking up of
• 04:30 - 05:00 unpaid work and the hilda data that came out yesterday said that um but we also know because it's writ large a little bit at the moment about the reality of of more gender diversity in a workplace and in decision making as well so that's one of the reasons why cr having a gender intersectional gender lens on the products and the services that we um we deliver is important it creates greater levels
• 05:00 - 05:30 of of alignment between what we do and what the community is it actually creates a better sense of cohesion and we know from the evidences that if we get a diversity and more women involved in decision-making about in your case how they want to memorialize their loved ones in the community that actually that will create better services that are more in keeping with the needs of community as well so that's the why
• 05:30 - 06:00 lula did you have anything else you wanted to add to that or veda as well about the why it's important to um to think about through um this this gia process or policy from the point of view of of equity in the community just add that uh the process we're going to go through will start to identify the places in your systems and structures that you can create more gender equal
• 06:00 - 06:30 benefits and outcomes so it's not just about participation but we really are looking at excuse me um how the work that smct does uh generates through multiple avenues more gender equal outcomes so that can start to touch on who your suppliers are and that sort of work as well and it's not um only the end result of having accessibility but more generalized outcomes across the economic benefits of the work of smct as
• 06:30 - 07:00 well yeah from my perspective kit our vision is to you know support our community to honor and celebrate life in the way that they choose and so being very deliberate in the questions and the services and um and programs that we're offering to our community we can ensure that there's further inclusion uh along each step of that process for them um and that's a that's a critical piece for
• 07:00 - 07:30 us as an organization yep wonderful so the way that we address this the way that we achieve the the the outcomes that we hope for our organization is we need to actually take deliberate steps and the act actually asks public entities to take special measures to address systemic and structural inequity for that it actually needs to be transformational i'm going to hand over to lula in just a second to take us through the next next
• 07:30 - 08:00 part but what i'd like to ask you to do if i may is we're just going to ask you to go on to um just let us know that from your perspective what is gender equality look like for snct
• 08:00 - 08:30 i mean this can mean many things to many people depending upon your lived experience i mean i think julie working with diverse communities you know that there are different perspectives of that um in community and what that means but if you're going to describe what gender equality means at smct what would that look like
• 08:30 - 09:00 here we go hopefully coming up now voices voices i think um that feedback that reflects the feedback i think that that came through before about what you already do that gender doesn't impact on rights access and service and making sure how do we do that all equal voices material opportunity to contribute these are incredible um
• 09:00 - 09:30 statements and veda certainly something that if we write a policy if there's a policy development these can be actually intent pieces that we put in there i think what's really important and i'm going to hand over to lula now is around this recognition that um it's about equity of access um contributing equally um balance and fair representation and laura i think where we need to start is thinking about what stops that i guess
• 09:30 - 10:00 what stops that so i might hand over to you now lula to take through what we mean by transformation what's stopping happening thanks kit so as um kits that have touched on before we are trying to do gender transformational work in the way that we apply the analysis and understanding through gender impact assessments um
• 10:00 - 10:30 so the work that we need to sorry i have cats running around like maniacs right now under the desk um so what we need to do to do the transformational piece is currently understand the constraints and what we're working with and when we do that we're really talking about the gender binary and that's the place that we need to start and get a really good grip on that so that we can see it understand it recognize where it is influencing our
• 10:30 - 11:00 thoughts and our opinions and our actions that then impact the outcomes and so we're going to take you through a couple of slides and send potentially some exercises around understanding how our own selves and our own lives and the work we do is influenced by this so first of all i'll just unpack the binary a little bit and and the construct of the binary first of all it is a construct and so when we talk about it we're not saying um that there are only masculine and feminine but
• 11:00 - 11:30 we're discussing why we need to understand that so the gender binary um obviously then doesn't exclude people who are not well it does exclude people from non-binary and that's part of the issue but we want to talk about um how rigid adherence to the gender binary and stereotypes really is promoting a sense of conformity and hierarchy that creates exclusion and discrimination so as we can see on the screen in front of
• 11:30 - 12:00 us we start to unpack some of the issues around it so we've got the binary of the masculine feminine qualities and that's the distinction of gender into two opposite forms of masculine feminine and that's whether by social system or cultural belief every society ethnic group and culture has gender role expectations that we put onto that they can be different from group to group but they and they can also change within the same society over time so in a binary model you're expected to
• 12:00 - 12:30 perform your um gender expression and your sexuality may be assumed to define um to align by default to ones aspects that are linked to your sixth or your one's genetic or gamut-based sex um and as identified at birth so for example when a male is born in gender binaries in masons that are male will be masculine in appearance have masculine character traits behaviors and include having a heterosexual attraction
• 12:30 - 13:00 to females so these aspects start to break into things about where we behave the way we dress sexual orientation our names pronouns and other qualities and these expectations may reinforce negative attitudes bias and discrimination towards people who display expressions of gender variance or non-conformity or whose identity is different to their birth sex and and you start to see that when we talk about ideas about the man box and how that's policed and how we can
• 13:00 - 13:30 actually see the different ways in our own lives and experience of others how as a society we actually create this limitation of what we expect someone can or could or should be related to their gender role and it's policed quite heavily um and we can go through that in a bit if we want to um we the other thing to understand is this work when we're talking about exploring the binary and doing transformational work is not at all to say that you can't find a sense of strength and belonging
• 13:30 - 14:00 and comfort in your gender and your gender expression we've all been socialized by the gender binary um and all of us have those expectation assumptions around that and it's not bad in and of itself to have concepts of masculine feminine but what it is is tricky when we start to understand that the way it's been constructed means that feminine is subordinate to masculine and how that's replicated throughout our system structures
• 14:00 - 14:30 the way we value work the way we value people who gets to speak in public et cetera et cetera so we'll move on i think to our stereotypes [Music] so we've got the binary and then associated with the binary are the four gender stereotypes and as you can see these then define your personality traits domestic behaviors physical appearance and occupation so for example personality traits we know that women are expected
• 14:30 - 15:00 to be accommodating and to be emotional while men are usually expected to be self-confident and aggressive domestic behaviours well we know women do something like 20 something hours a week of domestic labor and men only doing 10 at the moment and the roles are very much defined as feminine roles are inside the house and domesticated whereas masculine roles are outside the house and their leadership roles and that sort of thing occupations uh sorry physical appearance a lot of
• 15:00 - 15:30 pressure put on women to be physically attractive to attract a male partner so again that heteronormativity put into that space of the binary and very much we're weighed up about our value really being reduced to whether we are attractive enough as a mate as a partner will be sexually appealing and sexually available to a male partner to pick us off the shelf and decide that we are worthy of their time and attention and that maybe
• 15:30 - 16:00 they'll benefit us with uh bestowing us with their access to their resources and protection um and then we've got occupations and so that's obviously again in your work it's already been identified go let the cabinet make her in um and we're gonna guess their gender um because we're talking about occupations uh and so you can see this gender segregated workforce you know we know that there are occupations that are predominantly masculine such as
• 16:00 - 16:30 construction um engineering that sort of thing and we know that and politics and the like and we know there are other industries that are particularly female dominant such as caring child care nursing retail and often that aligns with more insecure and lower paid work as well so do you want to go to the um the maybe people can give some feedback about um a stereotype that they've seen recently
• 16:30 - 17:00 or one that you've experienced in your life i was um [Music] talking the other day lilla to my mother about some of the stuff that's going on you know nationally and how my now past uh deceased um grandmothers would see it now that they would look
• 17:00 - 17:30 we think that they would be very proud of the women standing up for inappropriate behaviours but also the men that were supporting it as well um you know this is women that couldn't have their own bank account wouldn't take out a home loan so things have changed but there's still those stereotypes that exist today um that we all experience yeah so that's example isn't it there of that occupational stereotype and the expectation that motherhood will
• 17:30 - 18:00 mean that you need the flexibility to care for children in a way that um a father doesn't yeah school uniform yeah totally yep skirts collats oh my daughter's 14 and she's noticed that she can't wear her hair down which is a little bit here but the young men that wear mullets can interesting yeah i haven't adapted to the mullet style
• 18:00 - 18:30 yeah but at the same time you know the young men can't wear their hair long if they want to as well they're told to cut it as well and boys aren't allowed to wear skirts yep who would be expected to work an outdoors role absolutely yeah but i similarly men being um you know that occupational sick care roles you know uh childcare workers uh equally segregated industry as um trades i think as well
• 18:30 - 19:00 even small things like who takes out the rubbish yeah who cleans the gutters yep mows the lawn yeah the other interesting thing is when you get personality traits when people um act against their stereotype isn't it so if you get a woman that perhaps is is is assertive she can be called bossy sometimes men if they act with care are labeled or
• 19:00 - 19:30 weak aren't they so how those personality traits we police them don't we yes don't throw like a girl you run like a girl yeah yeah excellent both partners working but only one cooks excellent oh my gosh we did an exercise with council women councillors early this year there's a whole raft of new female councillors across victoria and the amount of questions they have been asked about but who's going to cook dinner for you your husband or your children
• 19:30 - 20:00 now that you're a counsellor yeah it was um revealing it was revealing really great examples really great examples yeah thank you everyone yeah so we can see how you know we're sitting here talking about words and concepts like binary and gender stereotypes but you know we can actually see how this is very real as the way it impacts our lives on a day-to-day basis like it's not separate
• 20:00 - 20:30 from my life from your life it's not this oh gender equality is this thing that happens over there and we've got to look at it as this sort of external thing it's something that we all um inhabit um and that we all have choices uh that we make or things that are projected onto us based on our gender role and that's you know continues to function particularly in the workplace so the work that we're going to be asking you to do when you're applying a gender lens
• 20:30 - 21:00 really to the the gender impact assessment is we're doing twofold so there's a part of sitting in the reality that we're all been socialized by gender norms we've all understood that there are gender roles and expectations about who does what based on the body that you inhabit and the gender role that's projected onto you for that and so there's two steps in a gender lens we need to make sure that we're being inclusive and that
• 21:00 - 21:30 we're not putting up false barriers that exclude particularly women from the opportunities access and benefits that you provide sms smct both for the community-based work that you do but the business side of the work that you do as well and so when we're talking about that element of inclusivity and making sure we don't have things that exclude we've got the practical gender lens and that's making sure we meet the needs
• 21:30 - 22:00 and of what is currently existing in people's lives and but it doesn't challenge the gender division of labour agenda roles so an example of that may be that you create times to engage women around school hours so that you can access them brilliant because you know that they have different demands on their time than potentially male breadwinner who's not doing the same amount of work in the home or it might be you create a
• 22:00 - 22:30 breastfeeding spaces for people who are accessing um your services on site so they're the kind of things that identify a practical gender lens and lighting around safety all that sort of stuff that you'll be thinking about that's kind of the reality of what is if we're looking at the day-to-day lived experience of people in their gender roles and then the steps that the gender equality
• 22:30 - 23:00 act is really wanting you to think about and achieve is this next bit the strategic gender needs and that means that when we become aware of how our work is being influenced by gender roles that continue to perpetuate the subordinate of feminine roles to masculine roles that we do something meaningful about that that we don't just sit back and go oh well that's how it is and we actually
• 23:00 - 23:30 go well how can we change that what can we do so you know i think i and i think this will be a considerable piece of work that um you might want to think about particularly in the space of your engineers your construction and your suppliers so that's a very masculine dominated area but it's not only men who work in there and so you might have a policy that you put over your suppliers that you try to wherever possible make sure that you're sourcing gender
• 23:30 - 24:00 balanced suppliers and there's a raft of services out there that can help you do that across the board but you can look for organizations that are female-friendly workplaces that have female representation on in their executive in their boards and their supply your supply chains to make sure that that's really building in that strategic gender need part where you're taking the access to resources the opportunities to get that work and
• 24:00 - 24:30 you're pushing that out in a deliberate way to make sure that has a more gender balance outcome and that is a really meaningful thing that i think snct can take on board for this work for doing a gender impact assessment great any questions at this point before we move on michelle's asked the company introducing plans that they can provide which certifies them as gender equitable i think the only way there's no certification that we're aware of but what organizations do do nationally is
• 24:30 - 25:00 that they are part of the workplace gender equality agencies reporting and regular reporting scheme and in victoria of course all of the gaps gia's progress reports are all going to be published through the commission's website so they're the two that we know of i think that's the only two and there's also i mean those ones capture the large employers um certainly they probably don't capture a lot of your suppliers per se but there are other and we can get back
• 25:00 - 25:30 to you i know there's a couple of organizations um that do that kind of certification process for workplaces of choice i guess they're more about what's in place where they might seek um female talent and attract that to their workplaces and they have a list as well so we can share that later i just come over the exact name yeah sorry i just wanted to ask just because by nature of events we do use a lot of suppliers and they vary all of the time that's right and it you know it's become a thing now
• 25:30 - 26:00 where you can go do you have safe work practices in place or you know are you employing fairly in terms of wages are you a sustainable organization but i don't know if there's anything there around gender so that we can make in like you know you go to the shops and you're like i can see heart foundation tick for an example i know that's not the perfect example but um just to say there are ways that you can like check um the choices that you're making and make better informed choices so i just wanted to find out how to
• 26:00 - 26:30 actually find out that information before you select because it could become a part of your selection process when you're vetting your vendors there's a service called elect which does exactly that so it's creating gender balance through a digital marketplace connecting entrepreneurs with government and buyers so they start to look at that stuff i'll just flick you that so it's shopping by diversity essentially but i think some of the procurement practices that the government is certainly trying to improve through the actor are going to be there but
• 26:30 - 27:00 broadly that's not a systemic approach at the moment but still change to go i might keep moving on if that's okay though michelle let's just remind ourselves though the act actually requires public entities to take deliberate action to promote and facilitate uh equality and create human rights and eliminate systemic gender equality it does that by getting people as i said to do these four things an audit and a quality action plan against seven
• 27:00 - 27:30 indicators impact assessment and also report but of course today we're going to be focusing on the gender impact assessments so what are they look it's what it's on the label all right so when it says gender it's actually looking at intersectional across all genders so you know those strengths that you've got a lot around seeing what community wants we're going to activate that part of your brain to notice things around
• 27:30 - 28:00 intersectional gender equality so intersectionality is um the idea that it's not just gender that compounds disadvantage that there are other conditions and certainly a go against you julie you you're encountering that absolutely but it's not only cultural language it's education level access to ses levels socioeconomic level a whole range of things so that's what a gia is asking you to do is to look at intersectional gender equality agendas
• 28:00 - 28:30 the impact assessment is both prospective and evaluative so it's asking you to analyze forward what might be the impact of the intervention that we're about to do but then has it worked so it's what it says on the label and impact gender assessment intersectional across all genders is it going to work will it actually make a difference but then evaluate what you've done this obligation actually came into
• 28:30 - 29:00 effect on the 31st of march it's one of those funny things we're meant to be doing it now but um we need to report on it by sorry the 31st of october that should be 2023. malcolm you had a question yeah i think specific to maybe some of our communities are there any experience or guidance around if you take a gender equality engagement step with a community who are very far from gender equal yeah rather clearly the backlash particularly
• 29:00 - 29:30 if you're going it alone um could be as much of a problem as trying to improve things yeah and so i think maybe working with other groups and possibly councils and other ways to raise this conversation particularly in communities where it's more severe than others perhaps it's something that we've got to step into but has its own risks so i guess experience and how we might go about doing that i think i think your your point that you're making is is right because at
• 29:30 - 30:00 this point that's where people go to they do they go oh hang on how this is going to work across all communities the act is asking you to do these three things it's actually asking you to engage in a process that will hopefully lead to that transformational strategic change now wise works with communities where the word gender is not something if we actually mention that gender equality in in a space it will break rapport
• 30:00 - 30:30 but we still where we do it is in prevention of violence against women but we still want to hold the the community our society to account to change their behaviors so we do it in different ways right so your radar and your knowledge about that malcolm and what your radaring that your staff understands is right but it's about holding and still ex and still holding the right behaviors uh to account so the process actually asks us to do these three things it actually asks you
• 30:30 - 31:00 to assess the effect of a policy your program has on different genders it asks you to explain how the policy programs will be changed to promote and create gender equality and it asks you to apply intersectional approach about the compounding forms of disadvantage and that's the space where you can kind of because it actually asks you to look at options so malcolm that i think that you're identifying the staff that's where some of the options or the risks can come into
• 31:00 - 31:30 will this you know um will this create disruption too much will it actually allow us to promote gender equality etc but it's long-term work that you're doing so hopefully that's given you the space to understand that this is absolutely um change change work if i might just yeah please just also acknowledge that you know the work that you're being asked to do is social change work and
• 31:30 - 32:00 whenever you do social change you meet resistance and backlash absolutely and that's that's part of it and we can work with you to support you on some strategies around that as well and it is real and it does make people uncomfortable and that's what it's designed to do it's designed to make the people who are trying to be on the side of social change feel uncomfortable feel vulnerable feel like this is too hard to do because it's trying to maintain that status quo and i understand that can be
• 32:00 - 32:30 hard to figure out how to work with it how to challenge appropriately when not to challenge if it is dangerous um but yeah we can certainly help if there's if you're finding that something you encounter which you i expect you really will uh in small and big ways um hopefully more on the small end but even inaction can be a form of resistance so people who just don't think it matters it doesn't apply to them it's not in their job to do so we can certainly work with snct around some
• 32:30 - 33:00 of that stuff on resistance and backlash there's people who've gone before us they've passed on the tricks of the trade and we can support that for you for something that you're encountering or that you would like to get a little bit of a grasp on before you go out and start having these conversations or asking these questions yep thanks i've just put in the chat a link to a website now everything we're about to talk through now is actually taken and distilled from the commission for gender
• 33:00 - 33:30 equality in the public sectors advice and process right there are no state secrets here in terms of content but grunt work in our experience occurs through two things the application and from what i call you turn your intersectional gender lens vision on right so one of the things that's often i think the hardest thing to do is to turn this part of your reticular activating system your brain on that's
• 33:30 - 34:00 actually become quite used to the world of the binary that lula talked about about taking almost process steps rather than strategic steps for change all right so just keep that in the back in mind remember those stereotypes you started to think about um the the first step in the process and i want to acknowledge that the time is running short and i appreciate that the first
• 34:00 - 34:30 thing we'll record this but the first thing i i want to do is talk to you about the first thing that you that we we think about is do i need to do a gender impact assessment now the commission's pretty clear on this you do all processes and policies and programs need to have a gender impact assessment done on them only if they are they are new are they being reviewed
• 34:30 - 35:00 but also if they follow this criteria do they directly impact on the public there will be some things that you are talking about today that don't impact on the public right are they significant nowhere is tamina are they significant what is their reach what is their depth do they impact health well-being of the economy in the community and for many of you who are here today certainly
• 35:00 - 35:30 your center absolutely does julie the complaints policies that you look after and programs do i think chris and andrew there is no doubt the infrastructure that you are planning the parks absolutely do so yeah these sort of things do but remember it's the policies programs and services the third test is why not
• 35:30 - 36:00 and the third test is there to say well it might not be a huge reach or it might be not completely direct but the test is well why not do it anyway is it still a good thing to do and that's really putting the the position back no worries michelle back on you that that you can still do it don't eliminate yourself because it's still a good thing to do so that's the first step is it something that you need to actually do
• 36:00 - 36:30 no worries malcolm the four steps here though that we're going to work through um this is how you do it and if you've already got in your mind that experience of working through engaging with community i'm actually thinking that some of these steps are probably not going to be significantly different to what you already do the first thing we do is what's the challenge that we're trying to address what are the assumptions we're trying to challenge ourselves to do
• 36:30 - 37:00 then we go through and understand the context of the policy in the service so the environment that we're if you do an options analysis with risks and you make a case for change now i'm imagining that in the sort of work that you do even in terms of business as usual that they are the sort of the typical stages that you're engaged in but but what we're finding as i said before we're doing this for that intersectional gender equity lens
• 37:00 - 37:30 the first step that we need to do as i said is we define the issues and we challenge the assumptions so what's the challenge we're trying to address do we actually know what we're trying to do how does gender impact the programs and services that we're delivering now that's probably the first stage where we start to actually challenge ourselves in terms of understanding the limits of our understanding have we actually thought
• 37:30 - 38:00 about how gender impacts what we do so lear i might go to the center that you're doing now my understanding is that there's a lot of the women that are engaged in that you know an interesting question might be how do we actually ensure that we're supporting grief for all genders in our community that's a very liberating idea to think about and actually what are we trying to address is it supporting grief is it actually getting um um uh people more connected to the the site
• 38:00 - 38:30 and get them to understand what the trust does so those are the sort of things as well i don't let you put yourself off mute i don't know if you wanted to make a comment there yeah i was just going to totally agree with you that that's definitely something that we're looking at for the programs we have yeah yeah again do we understand the need for the service in the program again chunking it up but what blind spots do we have in our information gathering so it might be you've got a consultation but you
• 38:30 - 39:00 realize when you look at the data and who actually provides input to that that mainly we're getting feedback from women or mainly we're getting feedback from men on this or maybe the feedback comes from suppliers that are uh predominantly from male trade so it's it's about actually assessing the the the assumptions that we have about our process from the point of view of intersectional gender equality do we actually get feedback from people with
• 39:00 - 39:30 diversity of education experience from diversity of language etc now you've already got those systems in place so it might be about strengthening them as well let's have a look at an example to try to encourage us to to think about this a bit more practically now um i'm happy to share this uh with you through the the the um through the chat but i'm not sure everyone has got access to google docs but this is a a um
• 39:30 - 40:00 a policy that's in development beta do you want to just quickly outline vita what the policy does oh you're on mute mode you're on mute thanks oh gosh my machine just would not take me off me at the end i clearly thought i didn't have anything much important to say this is not actually a policy at the moment this is a process that we run
• 40:00 - 40:30 through the intent of this particular program of work is to ensure that we can support our community and ourselves to choose names that are appropriate for community and our use so when a community comes to us and wants to create an area or we are naming a new space within the organization as well we try and apply some of these rules to ensure that there is an appropriate name that's created that supports both their needs the community's needs and um
• 40:30 - 41:00 you know cultural or religious practices and things but also doesn't get lost or confused with any other things that we already have in our systems um that we're not trying to name it after somebody who may be um inappropriate in future um and that we're not contradicting or creating confusing names for things across our sites yeah so this if we go back to those challenge questions it's very clear about i think to me about what you're trying to address um has there been a consideration of how
• 41:00 - 41:30 gender impacts this process that you seek to deliver honestly i know you're it's in development i'm putting on the spot a bit here um to date look a lot of the things when we go out to community we do try and get equal representation um there is another piece to alongside of this one which is in that the denominational space as well and ensuring in those areas is quite important too so um i believe that there is but i
• 41:30 - 42:00 couldn't hand on heart so that we're always going for equal representation yeah and if we look at it from the point of view of what lula was talking about which was the strategic transformational piece there is perhaps opportunities now to kind of think about well do we understand as you said through the consultation the need from all genders and or in intersectional perspective but you know can we recognize that in some of the language that we're using and you've already talked to the blind spots and perhaps in the information
• 42:00 - 42:30 gathering so that's stage one is just absolutely seeking to understand well hang on do we understand what we're trying to achieve here because once we understand that you can go into stage two which is that context and this is really where the opportunity is for you to learn encourage you to see a gia as a learning process be curious now some of you might be now thinking about some of the policies you've got
• 42:30 - 43:00 again you know chris and andrew when you're thinking about the enormous infrastructure that you're doing i encourage you to think about this applying not to the whole memorial park but just two parts of the process to deliver that outcome so how does gender shape the context of the process the policy of the program being reviewed so for leah or for julie for your complaints process
• 43:00 - 43:30 how does gender impact it you might not have thought about it do you know how the different genders like to actually put feedback into the organization you know what are some of the gender norms around raising complaints what evidence do you already have so you know you might look back and see well who's put the complaints in
• 43:30 - 44:00 is is there a need to get a more intersectional gender view on that data that you already have what more do you need to find out do you know who's going to be affected and what difference they are for those people and lives and what lived experience of diverse people can you learn from so leah you know can we go and talk out to the lgbtiq plus community knowing that that acronym actually represents not one group of people but many different lived experiences
• 44:00 - 44:30 when it comes to grief of men uh how and grief of men of their even of their their their children passing or their siblings how how how do we how do we support that do we understand the memorialization hopes of different genders as opposed to different faith groups um and what that means um have we actually got a sense of women who
• 44:30 - 45:00 their partners have passed are perhaps left with less disposable income to spend on memorialization have we actually got those partnerships in place so this is why we encourage you to start small with the gia at a pilot stage noting time i'm just going to skip through this and go on to the next one while you've got that all in place this is where you start to see what options are available to you
• 45:00 - 45:30 so vita if we go back to your um [Music] your your process of naming when you were developing that you identified a problem that you wanted that process to fix what options did you think were available to you at the time if i can ask you to go back that's not a process that i've actually developed it's something that i'm reviewing at the moment oh okay options coming to you but part of the
• 45:30 - 46:00 part of the um part of the development and the ongoing development of this particular piece is around how do we ensure that the organization trips off this process at an appropriate time to ensure that consultation can be can be undertaken uh that we've reviewed um you know the information that's available to us already um and that we've got time to go back to community for example if if the name that they've suggested for us is not appropriate all of those kind of elements so it's the triggers um and it's as an organization
• 46:00 - 46:30 what we agree to what is appropriate for naming as we go forward and i wonder too is there um one of the pieces of work that we're very familiar at wise at the moment is of the public naming of places and how it's predominantly particularly in arts and civic people we know that there's a push on to there's a campaign a grassroots campaign particularly around the mornington peninsula area i have to say around getting more streets and places named after
• 46:30 - 47:00 women that's come because if i could say the naming processes the consultation process and who made the decisions they've found the process for naming uh had a bias in it an implicit bias i have to say um i guess some of the options available to us is to make sure that our process opens up those decision-making places isn't it absolutely yeah so the options there are we'll have what options are we for actually creating that
• 47:00 - 47:30 transformational page to change this stage actually asks you to create a number of options and take the time again it's providing you with the deliberate opportunity to take the time to think about adoption so andrew and chris i know one of the things you were thinking about was suppliers you know you might think about well we want to go to suppliers that actually apply gender lens in their architecture and their landscape design
• 47:30 - 48:00 and i wonder if one of the the risks that you will discover through that process is there's not many that does like michelle identified before so what are the options for you if that's one of the risks moving forward is it that you ask them to go on a journey with you to discover it there's lots of different options available to you chris i've just seen you go and andrew gold commute did you want to make a comment of that yeah i was just going to say that
• 48:00 - 48:30 quite often our options are directly proportionate to the size and scale and complexity of the organizations that we partner with so so um you know if you go to typically consulting professional firms they're very much in tune with that because you know design follows trend um and follows movement and follows yeah how things evolve so i think there's a very high awareness when you're in the
• 48:30 - 49:00 professional the consulting space what will be interesting for us in terms of how do we apply gender lens to a number of things including our delivery models um will be more to do with the size and scale so we tend to play with very small boutique even mom and dad type operations yeah so what's really interesting kit i think is um how do we actually apply the right pathway with yeah
• 49:00 - 49:30 based on the criteria that the attributes of the partner that we're trying to work with um so i think one one aspect you know large-scale architectural design firms it will be a very easy conversation to say we want to understand how you're applying um yeah the gender equality to the decision-making process in design as well as at an organization level when you get to um yeah when you get to very small operators applying the same type of consideration
• 49:30 - 50:00 becomes a little bit limited so right one becomes a journey piece one becomes yeah how might we um encourage you to go beyond um you know opportunities for apprentices which is 10 what we tend to get yeah in our assessment criteria of of new partners um into something a bit more so i think it's good there's going to be opportunity to try and lift and shift some of our partners and and then others are going to be a little bit easier to get some traction
• 50:00 - 50:30 so chris i don't know if you had anything to say to that as well well i guess the only the other thing that sort of will underpin that a bit is um given the scale of projects we're dealing with or especially the one i am um we're under state government procurement rules so there'll be an element of whatever state government policies that gets pulled through into the project um yeah and mandated through as well yeah i'm not across how this legislation sort of sits in that package but i know that um you know in my 10 years dealing with
• 50:30 - 51:00 government procurement there's been sort of an evolution of requirements around diversity and inclusiveness in um procurement yep um i think your your writer chris around i think there was an announcement a couple of days ago about how the state government through the treasurer are going to modify some of their procurement of government for to to encourage construction organizations to um recruit women um that that's certainly one way that
• 51:00 - 51:30 procurement can be used if i can take you to another sector that's also struggling with this it's local councils so they deal with a lot of small contractors cleaning companies all sorts of different small organizations if we think of those questions about you know we can define the gender benefits and costs for the organization and the impact of the option but when we look at unintended consequences things like that one way to
• 51:30 - 52:00 that this or industry has overcome that is they're seeing themselves as deliberately building capability in partnership with the sector right so for local councils so for instance one of those might be the city of casey they are working with the large developers to help them develop the sector they are working with other councils to try to work out how to address this right now as lula said before you're engaged
• 52:00 - 52:30 in social change this takes time and i can tell you now that dr nikki vincent the commissioner is interested in how you're going to do that this is not a quick turnaround so this is the spot where you can think that through in a full business case costs benefits we take the time to go through that at this point the final point is you actually make the recommendation for change what's the evidence you've collected
• 52:30 - 53:00 what's the risks the mitigations and how the recommendation meets the needs so again sorry vita go with those recommendations that's the kind of area that we could actually include some of the questions that we're asking more broadly here for this particular project we recommended we take the following steps as part of uh you know like a springboard into you know reviewing this more broadly as an organization that might be the way that we're moving it forward as you say if
• 53:00 - 53:30 this is if this is a huge social change or a transformational piece we're not going to be able to do it within the scope of one project but that might be the the springboard for us andrew and chris would that kind of work to support um where your heads might be at with some of the supplier pieces i know that michelle was raising this too so it's like the recommendation for you know the next event is that we start exploring where we might be able to get some of this information from more suppliers with a with a view to longer term introducing a policy which asks us to
• 53:30 - 54:00 always have you know these these recommendations or these kind of criteria met by our suppliers um when we're looking at working with community for example and those areas that we know that there is going to be um unequal representation it's definitely a male-dominated cultural or reno religious background going out to those communities might be it might be quite uh detrimental to the the relationship and rapport that we're building with them to just go okay so what are you doing for gender equity what's happening
• 54:00 - 54:30 for women how you've got working with you know lgbtiq a plus community you know and they're going to be very unhappy about that in the first instance however if we say look we're starting this conversation this is the recommendation for our initial engagement with a view to working with local government um and other stakeholders within this community to see how we might address this long term but it's not going to solve the issues for that particular project would that be correct as that as an assumption that i just want to get that straight in my head yeah we're not taking on the world
• 54:30 - 55:00 of each project as we go through as part of the pilot absolutely you start with what's the problem right you start with what's the problem and the reason you start with that as i said which is not the whole memorial path development so for the the the the naming it's we want to make sure we're getting equitable intersectional gender equitable lens applied to our naming that we're reflecting community that's
• 55:00 - 55:30 the problem so then the next thing what's the evidence around that what's the policy context this is the mission of smscd this is what we know about our community this is the data of our community the diversity that we serve and you're amongst the most diverse community in australia then what's the what's the gaps that we've identified for that all right what's the options the evidence that costs the risks and the recommendation and as you get better at that as you get your eye in as it's called you'll actually find that the challenges
• 55:30 - 56:00 that you're about to address increase as lula says it is going to be done in increments looking where the opportunity lies in each project and each decision and can i go back to the strengths you've already got right you started this conversation by telling us that you already think about dean talked about it already thinked about community experience and customer experience you've already got that skill set we're asking you to hone it and i'm hoping
• 56:00 - 56:30 that that's the four steps folks and i'm hoping that what you can see is that by going through it very deliberately and like everything learning takes time it gives you the opportunity to sink through it quite deliberately in increments now the really good news is the commissioners actually created a kit to do it
• 56:30 - 57:00 and i know we'll be taking a break soon and going through and studying our action learning group but you can see in this kit that it actually has got that template to fill in sorry i'll just go down and i've already taken from this so they've actually got template tools of how to go through and actually answer the questions and they're all available on the website
• 57:00 - 57:30 so this is the first one about how you go and understand the challenges now this is a template it's not going to be right for everyone or every organization but it just gets you to step through to answer the question we actually think that the biggest challenge that any organization faces when doing this work is getting business as usual
• 57:30 - 58:00 now i know malcolm had to to drop out but he's already asking those questions and this is recorded so he can say that too but here's the thing that you need to discover how does your current delegation of authority policy empower your people to do this who has the authority to do a gia who has the authority to make the recommendation and who approves the enactment of that recommendation what skill and capacity is required to
• 58:00 - 58:30 do this now i'm lucky because i work with someone called lula dembale who's got qualifications in gender mainstreaming and has done this lots of different places all right but do we have the right skills and expertise within the organization do we have the right can i tell you partnerships so you've got a women's health service in the region who lula said you can partner with right now in in partner language that means a
• 58:30 - 59:00 partnership not fifa service can i just say that i think so but we're on a common goal for change can you partner with other organizations and suppliers to help develop it can you start conversations with other entities but have we got the right skills of the people in in the group to actually create the change what existing planning structures do you have i know that smct has a planning structure and how you've got your existing evaluation and monitoring that your policies and programs are regularly
• 59:00 - 59:30 reviewed with the gender links andrew you've come off mute i didn't know if you wanted to say something um no it was it was um uh further to what uh what vita was saying um previously about um um how we might go about applying some of these lenses um i think one of the things that's probably going to come which is front of mind for us is about how
• 59:30 - 60:00 this starts to apply to procurement policy particularly about the selections that we make through that policy and i think one of the things that we're really going to have to contemplate is how do we objectively define what's good better and different because in a traditional um you know government framework of procurement that we sit within um it tends to be weighted in the yeah there are lots of criterias they're weighted in a particular way um and it's for us i think it's really
• 60:00 - 60:30 understanding what is the weighting of the object objectiveness of some of those criteria because we might end up with a whole bunch of suppliers and vendors um who score next to nothing and potentially um will lose their competitive advantage because we don't actually have a proper um well-informed and objective criteria in which to basis them so they might be emerging um but under if if we have a criteria that isn't well informed that actually might work against them so
• 60:30 - 61:00 it's that balance between equality and competitive in the marketplace in the way that we assess and select our vendors and how do we make sure that they're showing the the right evidence or they're making the right positive steps to meet that criteria so yeah we go back to the the small trader the dog and the ute um trader might be doing things with all the best intentions and making positive steps but if you compare them to a tier one civil works contractor
• 61:00 - 61:30 you know i guess i'm just trying to i guess we need to call out understanding that criteria is going to be really important for us and maybe that's the problem that you want to challenge right how do we create consistent gender equity practice across the diversity of our traders the answer to that might be we can't so then the challenge is can we target the small suppliers
• 61:30 - 62:00 to develop their capacity that might be that might be the review to the policy that you've got in place and then the solutions to that might be bringing in the big guns it could it could be recognizing the fact that they're committed to change um you know the fact that they might drive it through their training and education um approach they might yeah there's probably lots of ways that they could do it that are starting to show signs that they are committed to change and i think
• 62:00 - 62:30 we need to recognize that just as much as um established systems yeah and i think there's as thinking about incrementally it might be for for one project you find a female supplier who's able to do the exact same thing and you've just taken that step to find that singular one you know and so you can't replace everybody it's not about replacement but it's not necessarily going to be in a um gender segregated workforce or sector that you can just go all right everyone's gender
• 62:30 - 63:00 balance now and i sorted this out and the whole thing's got to be that way but it's that incremental step okay for this project we managed to find this supplier that's a female-led organization and we're using them this time for these things and so it's not going to be necessarily everything but you've taken a deliberate step and that's a that's the process as well so additional then that conversation of lifting and building the capacity and the work but i think you'll find that there are there are options that you can bring in in small ways for each decision each
• 63:00 - 63:30 project that starts to build out and step you towards that general step of improvement so it's not you're not nth degree every time but you are taking one step and then you build on that and then you learn from that process and then uh as you'll see you know supply and demand works right so if you're saying that these are our needs i think that will start to shape um the sector as well in ways that you may not see for a while but that will start to have that ripple effect as the pebble
• 63:30 - 64:00 [Music] i think give you i think um you know the rush for perfection excellence is fine and this is a deliberate project for a learning journey um we've got a bit of a check-in i know we've got less people now that we did at the start and i want to apologize for running considerably over time but i think the discussion was really valuable and important to have if you just let us know
• 64:00 - 64:30 i think we've got all the feedback there the only other thing that is really important for us to know now is just what else do you want to know now so what we've done in learning land is we've turned on your reticular activating system so now you're probably starting to notice it's not uncommon for people to come out of these sessions and notice everything's inequitable right and that can become a bit overwhelming let us know what you want to do we're going to take a break in a
• 64:30 - 65:00 second and come back and start our action learning teams to try to start to get into the process but let us know what other things you're you're wanting to know the action learning process will start off by just working out is this something we want to work on and what's the problem so we just start with the first step we don't have to do the whole bit in the next hour
• 65:00 - 65:30 absolutely the templates will absolutely be shared and as i said they are all available on this website here no state secrets that's where they all are and that'll be a core document for us and the action learning group we're going to have a shared google drive or a shared drive where we can share things and keep things as well absolutely you will have a copy of the side deck i will send that through to you for sure
• 65:30 - 66:00 so um what steps we need to take yep we're going to go through that so we'll go through the four steps that'll be the steps that we break for and how far do we need to go with consultation and who will do it at smct it depends upon your area and it'll depend upon the solutions that you need to find to address the challenge you might have the systems that you might have might be fine they just need a bit of tweaking but for some of you
• 66:00 - 66:30 actually might discover we've got a whole section of the community we're not talking to enough approaches with working with faith-based community might be easy absolutely and is always something we need to learn and it might be veda that i can share some evidence that we've got um with you through to your colleagues and happy to kind of organize a forum or a you know specific thing for for engaging on that too i think that'll be a terrific one particularly for um the outreach framework that's being developed um and to strengthen and
• 66:30 - 67:00 bolster the strategic engagement frameworks that we've been putting together a lot of the work that we'll be doing here through the gia will support both of those pieces for us as a consultation team um within strategic engagement and also to support anybody else who's undertaking this consultation so they'll have some ready tools up there at their disposal which of course we'll have to keep coming back and refining as we go forward yeah so