Gender equality obligations are ‘the starting point, not the finish line’

Further to the landmark and Australian-first legislation of the Victorian Gender Equality Act 2020, the State of Gender Equality in Victoria’s Public Sector 2026 report has revealed generally positive gains for the female workforce and highlighted where more attention is required.

HR Leader spoke with Victoria’s first public sector gender equality commissioner, Dr Niki Vincent, to examine revelations from more than five years of evidence gathering and what work still needs to be done.

Vincent explained that the legislation requires approximately 300 eligible duty holders, representing an estimated 500,000 public sector employees, as well as those in the 76 local councils and eight universities, to measure, report, and improve workplace gender equality through seven indicators.

These include gender composition across all workforce levels, gender composition of governing bodies, the gender pay gap, workplace sexual harassment, recruitment and promotion practices, leave and flexible working arrangements, and gendered segregation within the workplace.

Regarding the findings from her 2026 report, Vincent said there were numerous positive outcomes, but that progress at a systemic level remains slow. This was reflected in the seven out of 11 industries that saw the pay gap decrease, despite overall numbers not shifting.

She said: “In legislation like this, you have new players coming in, and those new duty holders added to the existing duty holders … and if we took them out, the pay gap did go down by a couple of per cent at the sector level, but the new organisations coming in had higher pay gaps.”

“I think that’s a more complicated story.”

Vincent also noted progress in male-majority sectors such as police and emergency services, with the pay gap in this sector dropping from 18.1 per cent in 2021 to 12 per cent in 2025, as well as the 5 per cent decrease in the public healthcare sector, and a sector low of a 2.4 per cent gap in local government.

However, as Vincent surmised, “we can’t rest on our laurels … we need to keep working on this”.

One such area is that of sexual harassment, which remained at approximately 6.4 per cent, or roughly 21,000 women, since 2021, and rose by 4.2 per cent in the last four years for gender-diverse and non-binary employees.

Experience rates for First Nations women, young women, and women with a disability also rose.

Identifying a significant gap between disclosure rates and formal reporting systems, Vincent said organisations should be reframing sexual harassment from a complaints issue to a workplace health and safety hazard.

“The gap between what employees experience and what actually gets formally reported is a serious problem that organisations need to address urgently,” she said.

“Lasting workplace and cultural change is rarely immediate or linear. It takes sustained effort, consistent leadership, and a clear focus on the outcomes that matter for workers and the Victorians they serve.”

As one of the factors influencing female participation in the workplace, flexible work uptake by fathers saw an especially significant upswing, increasing by almost 5 per cent from 2021 to 2025. Women saw a smaller but identifiable upswing from 23.7 per cent to 27 per cent.

According to Vincent, the narrowed gap between men and women using flexible work is its own positive sign. As with secondary parental or caregiver leave, increased uptake allows the more equitable sharing of unpaid care and household responsibilities, and limits the career setbacks that working mothers can experience.

And while men’s parental leave didn’t change at an industry level, Vincent explained that “you’ve got to look under the hood”.

“Men were taking more parental leave in six of 11 industries, but in two really big industries, which were health and police and emergency services, it took a dive. Because they’re such big industries, they wash out the gains that we’ve seen in other industries at the whole sector level,” she said.

In one of the standout findings from the report, women in leadership roles were more proportionally represented, accounting for 57.2 per cent of senior roles in 2025, up from 53.1 per cent in 2023.

“When [women] work in safe, fair workplaces, with genuine opportunity to progress regardless of their gender, they can do their best work,” Vincent said.

“Gender equality is a matter of good governance.”

“Real change comes when equality is embedded in how organisations lead, manage and deliver services, with accountability that starts at the top.”

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