United front fights government gender reporting changes - Women's Agenda

United front fights government gender reporting changes

They unofficially call themselves the ‘Coalition of the Willing’. And they’re willing to use their combined power to do whatever it takes to see Australian businesses report on the gender composition of their workforces.

A united front of business and women’s groups met in Canberra Tuesday to lobby against the Abbott government’s proposal to scale back gender reporting requirements under the Workplace Gender Equality Act. The current regulations require companies with more than 100 employees to report on gender metrics like pay, promotion, retention and recruitment.

They believe the collection and reporting of gender-related data in companies is critical for improving workplace equity and participation, and especially for increasing the number of women in management and leadership roles.

The front includes a broad range of groups extending beyond those with ‘women’ in their name, including the Financial Services Institute of Australia and Local Government Mangers, as well as the Diversity council of Australia, National Foundation of Australian Women, National Council of Women of Australia and BPW (Business and Professional Women).

According to Women on Boards director Claire Braund, a key leader in the group, the reporting requirements affect less than five per cent of businesses but it’s a pool that employs almost half of all Australians. She argues the reporting is not “onerous”, nor does it constitute “red tape” as the Minister for Employment, Senator Eric Abetz claims.

National Foundation for Australian Women Social Policy Committee chair Marie Coleman told Women’s Agenda the group would lobby the Labor party and the Greens to reject changes to the regulations in the Senate. “We agree every piece of legislation can be fine tuned, but we are drawing a line in the sand about what can not be taken out,” she said. “Big companies have all this data, it’s a matter of pressing the appropriate keys on their human resources databases.”

She believes the proposed changes will basically gut the specifics on what companies – regardless of size – have to report on. The group claims the proposed amendments will result in less meaningful data sets on workforce gender composition.

Companies are currently reporting their first sets of data, in line with the standards introduced by the former Labor government. If the current government fails to have its changed regulations in force by the first day of April, then the reporting requirements will be entrenched another two years.

In a statement released by the ‘coalition’ the group called for a number of essential items to be retained in the regulations, including workfoce profile data on the gender of all managers, as well as gender pay equity objectives and whether any gender pay gap analysis has been conducted and actions taken in response.

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