1. Summary of recommendations to strengthen gender considerations in policy and budget decisions

Abstract

This chapter outlines the main recommendations of the OECD Review aimed at bolstering efforts in Australia to strengthen gender considerations in policy and budget decisions and accelerate progress towards gender equality.

    

1.1. Short term (next 1-2 years)

• Ensuring gender impact assessment and gender budgeting is sustained over time: Providing legal foundations will future proof gender equality as a core value of the Australian Public Service (APS) and embed gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting as core government practices. At a minimum, legislation should:

  • Provide a definition of gender equality;

  • Set out requirements in relation to gender impact assessment (GIA) and the budget process;

  • Set out the requirement for a Women’s Budget Statement to be tabled alongside the budget;

  • Clarify roles and responsibilities of key government actors.

• Establishing a Gender Budgeting Steering Group: This high-level Steering Group will bring together the key actors to guide the design and implementation of gender budgeting, including the Department of Finance, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C). Convened by the Office for Women, the Steering Group’s business will include setting out an action plan for the implementation of gender budgeting, providing a legal framework for gender budgeting, co-ordinating on guidance material, ensuring effective implementation of gender budgeting and developing a framework to measure its impact.

• Enhancing the quality of gender analysis: Solidify GIAs as the core tool of gender budgeting in Australia by ensuring that gender analysis is of sufficient quality and depth. As part of this:

  • Summary information from GIAs should be highlighted in the strategic briefing to the Expenditure Review Committee (ERC) relating to each new budget proposal;

  • GIAs should consider both the gender impacts of new policy proposals as well as corresponding offsets;

  • Budget measures of potentially significant impact on gender equality should be subject to in-depth GIA. No sectoral area should be omitted;

  • GIA should be undertaken at an early stage of the policymaking cycle so as to be able to inform the design of policies;

  • GIAs should increasingly include intersectional analysis to take into account cross-cutting and overlapping mechanisms of discrimination faced by various groups in the society.

• Building institutional capacity: This includes supporting the implementation of GIA and gender budgeting through:

  • Establishing a requirement for gender “champions” and focal points in all departments and agencies, at an adequate level and with appropriate positioning within each institution. As well as supporting GIA and gender budgeting in practice, these focal points would foster the broader systematic integration of gender perspectives into all areas of policymaking;

  • Honing guidance, templates, and other relevant material to support the implementation of GIA and gender budgeting, checking effective implementation of the screening criteria for GIA, and providing examples of the types and sources of data to be used in gender analysis;

  • Providing general training and awareness raising initiatives on GIA and gender budgeting for key stakeholders focused on their specific role. The integration of a gender perspective in trainings on other relevant topics, such as strategic planning, and procurement, would contribute to promoting gender-sensitive policymaking across the whole of government.

• Developing a Gender Data Action Plan: Focussing on strengthening the corpus of data and analysis available to support the implementation of GIA and gender budgeting, this Action Plan should:

  • Set out key steps to be addressed to remove data-related barriers to the implementation of GIAs and gender budgeting;

  • Enhance the collection and dissemination of data disaggregated by sex, gender, and other individual characteristics on a systematic basis;

  • Cement the role of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as a key supporting stakeholder in informing gender-sensitive policymaking. Structured engagement between the ABS, the Office for Women and departments and agencies will help bring the ABS into regular discussions around data gaps and needs to support the implementation of GIAs across policy sectors;

  • Foster further vertical data exchange and promote sharing of good practices on the collection and use of intersectional data with States and Territories.

• Strengthening the Office for Women: The effective functioning of the Office is critical in enabling the government to deliver on its heightened commitment to reducing gender inequalities. This means:

  • Reinforcing the policy co-ordination function of the Office to increase its ability to convene relevant stakeholders and develop a whole-of-government response to gender equality issues;

  • Clarifying and expanding the role of the Office with respect to gender equality research and data, so as to encourage the collection and sharing of data, research, and analysis necessary to make informed policy decisions related to gender equality;

  • Ensuring that the Office is appropriately resourced to fulfil its broader mandate and strengthened functions.

• Maximising the impact of the National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality: The Strategy should reflect the needs of Australia in social and economic terms. It should also:

  • Set out clear objectives aligned with those across States and Territories:

    • Including these objectives in Minister priority letters will help highlight gender equality as a national priority;

    • Tagging budget measures that aim to make significant progress on these objectives will provide insight into the adequacy of policy action being taken to achieve them;

  • Allocate roles and responsibilities, and lines of accountability for implementation;

  • Be linked to strategic planning processes across government to maximise policy coherence and co-ordination;

  • Have adequate mechanisms for monitoring and reporting on the achievement of the Strategy’s objectives.

• Developing a more comprehensive approach to gender budgeting. Specifically:

  • Further strengthening the content of the Women’s Budget Statement. Integrating summary information from GIAs accompanying new policy proposals, and gender budget tagging would help align the Australian statement with that of international peers;

  • Integrating a gender dimension into planning and performance frameworks, as well as evaluation and audit activities during the policy development cycle;

  • Ensuring accountability for gender budgeting through allocating time within the Appropriations and Estimates debates in parliament to discuss the Women’s Budget Statement;

  • Developing a vision for how gender budgeting and the new Measuring What Matters Framework will co-exist – along with any subsequent evolution towards well-being budgeting.

• Strengthening channels for stakeholder consultation and engagement: To allow departments and agencies to create opportunities for citizen input.

1.2. Medium-long term (year 3 and beyond)

• Reinforcing the “challenge” and “gatekeeper” functions of the PM&C: The PM&C Policy Team can play an important role in systematically ensuring the quality of GIAs accompanying non-budget submissions brought before the Cabinet. This includes having the authority to send proposals back to departments on the grounds of a missing or incomplete analysis.

• Further strengthening the legislative framework for gender equality: Adopting human rights legislation could provide robust protection to the rights of all population groups and help embody equality as a key value in Australian society.

• Expanding the intersectional nature of GIAs: This will deepen understanding around the causes of gender gaps, enabling more targeted policy responses.

• Publishing ex ante GIAs of all final policy decisions: Greater transparency would increase citizen trust in the work of the government and improve the quality and rigour of the analysis.

• Continuing to improve data integration and interoperability: Improved availability of high-quality and comparable data across the whole-of-government will support stronger gender analysis and better-targeted gender-sensitive policymaking.

• Integrating a gender dimension into budget reforms: This will ensure that gender budgeting continues to be built-in to the overall approach to budgeting, rather than an “add-on”.

• Expanding the mandate of the Office for Women to include gender equality and its intersecting factors: Although in practice the Office’s work goes beyond women’s issues, formalising a broader mandate will maintain and reinforce the ongoing reform process in Australia. This should be accompanied by a corresponding rebranding.

• Expanding the oversight role of the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO): This should include regularly examining the implementation of GIA across the government and assessing the extent of its application throughout the policy cycle.

• Reviewing the institutional arrangements for gender budgeting: This includes assessing the quality and scope of GIAs accompanying budget measures in light of the initial years of operation and revisiting practices if necessary to ensure that it continues to be impactful and enduring.