All Cabinet Submissions and New Policy Proposals (NPPs) must be informed by gender analysis and include a Gender Analysis Summary. The Gender Analysis Summary must be included in the relevant section in the Impacts Table.
Policy makers are encouraged to analyse and demonstrate consideration of gender throughout the policy proposal to provide a robust summary of gendered impacts. The NPP template requires a clear and concise high-level summary, usually 3-5 sentences, which demonstrates whether the policy has a gendered impact, what that impact is, and how the policy affects gender equality, drawn from the gender analysis conducted on the NPP.
Gender analysis (refer to Part 2) captured in an NPP should also be applied and reflected in the Cabinet Submission. The Gender Analysis Summary for a Cabinet Submission with multiple NPPs should reflect the analysis for the Cabinet Submission as a whole.
When preparing a Gender Analysis Summary consider:
- Are there existing gender inequalities related to the policy area? Such as inequalities in participation, responsibilities or distribution/access to resources.
- Does the proposed policy:
- Provide equitable access to services?
- Promote participation of all people equally in decision making?
- Perpetuate or prevent gender based violence, including addressing risks of violence, and ensuring appropriate and trauma informed support/interactions with victim-survivors and/or perpetrators?
- Address or challenge gender stereotypes or roles?
- Are there gender norms or attitudes that may impact patterns of behaviour in the policy area?
- If yes, is it anticipated that this may lead to the policy having a different or disproportionate impact based on gender?
- What will that impact be? Will it have a positive or negative impact on gender equality?
- What gender disaggregated data, evidence or insights are available (refer to Appendix B for suggested data sources)? Are there intersectional data, evidence or insights (refer to Part 1.2)?
- Do stakeholders identify or raise gender impacts?
- Can demographic data, evidence and insights, e.g. family composition, household types, income level, be used to infer the gender impact of a proposal?
The first sentence of the Gender Analysis Summary outlines whether the policy, on balance:
- improves gender equality
- has no impacts on gender equality
- negatively impacts gender equality.
Additionally, the Gender Analysis Summary should capture the findings from each step of the gender analysis, such as:
- any gendered context to the policy issue
- available and relevant gender disaggregated data and evidence
- differential impacts on different groups (e.g. First Nations people, people with disability, people living in rural or regional areas, people of low socio-economic status etc.)
- whether stakeholders identify a gender dimension to the issue
- clearly outlining any gendered impacts of the policy.
In a Gender Analysis Summary
Do
- Ensure analysis is targeted and proportional
- Draw on relevant data and evidence where available, including stakeholder feedback and expert analysis
- Reflect how intersectional factors may compound gendered impacts
- Ensure any gendered impacts of the policy are transparent to decision makers
- Reflect how gendered norms and patterns, for instance around caring responsibilities, may influence access and outcomes
Don't
- Record a nil or neutral impact without explanation
- Reflect assumptions that gendered impacts are broadly the same for all women or make generalisations such as “all women” or “particularly women”
- Assume that equal access to a program or service results in equal outcomes
Example Gender Analysis Summary content
Positive impact
This proposal has a positive impact on gender equality. This proposal mandates the payment of superannuation with wages on a fortnightly basis and will improve the super balances of low income people, who are more likely to be women. It will address the misalignment of superannuation and wages which leads to one in five women being underpaid superannuation. People who are young or on lower incomes are more likely to be affected by underpaid superannuation and women are more likely to be represented in these groups. Modelling of the impact of underpaid superannuation in female dominated industries shows that it can result in an enrolled nurse having $44,000 less super at retirement, a personal assistant having $37,000 less super, and an aged care worker having $35,000 less super.
No or neutral impact
This proposal has a neutral impact on gender equality as it seeks funding to upgrade an existing ICT service delivered by Government to members of the public. The proposal will result in client information being held on a secure cloud, rather than within an existing server, but will not affect clients’ experiences of the service or service centre staff experience – including staff experience in updating client information.
The proposal will maintain existing and best practice levels of protection for customer information for all people, regardless of gender.
The department administering the ICT program has close to a gender balance in both the ICT and service delivery workforce affected by the proposal. Women make up 45 per cent of the ICT workforce and 51 per cent of the service delivery workforce.
Negative impact
This proposal has been assessed as having a negative or uneven impact on gender equality. While the policy has not been designed to have a gender bias, existing workforce imbalances mean the impact of this proposal will be uneven. The existing workforce is made up of X% men and Y% women. As the proposal will provide resources to the existing male-dominated workforce, the benefits will flow mostly to men, which may aggravate the gender pay gap, or slow its closing.
The provision of resources to the existing workforce is necessary and urgent to smoothly transition from old industries into emerging industries. The negative/uneven impact of this proposal will be mitigated with the accompanying proposal (X refers). The accompanying proposal will provide targeted support for women to participate in new industries, to prevent replication of a gender segregated workforce.