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Hi everyone, I'm Chloe Read, she/her Managing Director at TAFE NSW and I'm joined by the NSW Department of Education Secretary Murat Dizdar.

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We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people as the owners of the lands and waterways on which we are coming from today and pay our respects to their elders past and present.

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We're here to talk about gender equity, what it is, why it matters and how our two public education agencies are working together to achieve it.

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Murat, welcome to TAFE NSW Ultimo.

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It's fantastic to be with you Chloe, and to come back to my old stomping ground.

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I did work in the offices here at TAFE Ultimo as an Executive Director of Public Schools.

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Just want to acknowledge the work you're leading with your staff and students.

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Lovely to be in situ here at our automotive workshop.

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Chloe, I know together we want to recognise the diversity, and we want to prioritise inclusion, because it helps both all our individuals and our organisations grow.

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I know you're deeply committed, as I am, to creating a safe and inclusive environment.

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Why?

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Because we want everyone to feel valued, we want everyone to belong, and we want everyone to know that they can contribute.

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Just want to call out the NSW Government and its strong commitment to gender equity.

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We are driven to remove gender-based barriers for people of all genders across NSW, and it was last year that all the NSW public sector secretaries committed to developing Gender Equity Action Plans so that we can support the NSW Government's commitment to further diversity and inclusion.

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The Department of Education and TAFE NSW have a rich history of public provision as well as a rich history of making sure we get equity right, and we want to talk to you about why equity is important to us as opposed to equality.

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Equality simply means that we treat everyone the same, while equity is about treating everyone fairly based upon their individual and differing needs.

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We do recognise that our strategies need to address the unique challenges and barriers faced by all genders.

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That's right Murat, I'm delighted that TAFE NSW and the Department of Education have collaborated to develop a Joint Gender Equity Action Plan as a shared commitment to gender equity throughout all stages of an individual's time with public education.

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It's a strategic initiative which will guide our work towards removing gender barriers to participation and advancement for all students, employees and community members.

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Every student has to count, every employee matters, and we're here to serve every community member in NSW.

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They deserve the opportunity to succeed.

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We can do this by addressing systematic barriers and creating pathways for everyone to excel.

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That's right.

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Our Shared Gender Equity Action Plan focuses therefore on leadership systems, people and well being to address barriers like race, disability and socioeconomic status because we know that they compound gender disparities.

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Together we will work to ensure gender diverse leadership, psychological safety and really importantly that we have transparent data practises so we can create a safe environment where everyone thrives.

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Our plan highlights women and gender diverse employees in leadership, equal access to parental leave, male representation in early childhood education, inclusion of all genders in our ways of working and job sharing.

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Having held a senior executive job share role, I'm thrilled to see TAFE NSW and the Department of Education embrace this approach, supporting work life balance and workplace success as it did for me.

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We are very proud of our role in creating more equitable education system where everyone feels safe and valued and empowered to contribute.

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We do want you all to take part in these initiatives, gaining personal benefits while contributing to a more inclusive environment.

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Hi, I'm Meghanne Wellard.

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I'm the Executive Director of Public Schools, Rural North I'm so fortunate that I've had a career as a leader in the Department of Education, starting from my time in a classroom where I was a leader all the way through to the role that I'm in now.

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I've had fantastic opportunities because of the structures and the settings in this department.

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And what I've watched over the decades is things just improving and improving around our gender equity approaches.

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For some years, I was the only female deputy principal in a very large geographic area.

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And I found that very challenging in terms of finding my identity as a leader and also receiving the collegial support that male colleagues were giving each other in that, in that setting, it's easy to lose your way, I think as a female in that setting when there's an absence of other female leadership to aspire to, but certainly be mentored by or coached by.

1:06
And that's something that was, was a challenge for me as I came through in my leadership journey.

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I think the department has a history of really quite healthy policy around gender equity and I think that it contextually, we address equity in that space really quite well.

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The setting's right for what we need.

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What we need to be doing is following the policy, but really believing that it's an important issue that we all need to engage in and actually act on.

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So in terms of, you know, what we need in a gender equity action plan, everything that we need is actually there.

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This is a great blueprint for us, you know, moving, moving forward.

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But what we need is people to engage in this work.

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What we need is for people to understand that we've got all of the tools that we need to ensure that nobody's excluded because of their gender and to ensure that we focus on the skill sets and the talents and the attributes of our workforce to make sure that this is a great place for them to work everyday.

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Particularly if you've worked in an organisation for a quite a long time, 33 years, there's opportunities in your leadership journey to address gender equity issues as well as, you know, learn from the experiences that you have.

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I think if we're talking about truly gender equitable workplaces, we really need to be moving into that space where we've gone way past one worrying about whether somebody's gender is going to impact their work.

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We work in flexible workplaces where both women and men can access particular aspects of their employment conditions that help them to work part time, that help them to take leave when they need to, that help them to be as engaged in their team as they can be.

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And it's really important that we look beyond our traditional, probably historical view of, of how we employ in the Department of Education and, and have a really careful think about the skill sets that we need and how we can make sure they're on board rather than excluding them.

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For the things that, you know, at the end of the day, we've got policy and procedure that addresses and it addresses well, it works well.

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We've got some great arrangements working in our department.

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There really is no job in the public sector where job sharing cannot work.

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I have been incredibly privileged in my career and did not experience anything that you would think was a gender equity challenge until I took the step of becoming a mum and having a family and then realised that age old question of how do I manage this career that I had been building alongside wanting to be a really present and engaged mum.

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And so that's when job share kind of, I guess entered my orbit as something to explore.

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When I was about to have my first child, there was a big push on flexibility in the workplace.

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I was working at a government agency, and it really was an if not, why not approach to flexibility.

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And job share was modelled by senior people in the organisation.

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So there were really successful job shares at executive director level and director level.

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So that really the leadership from the top to really support flexibility as a way life in the public service was what really did, I think, make a big change for women in that workplace.

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So I think the Gender Equity Action Plan is going to help address challenges because you really need that leadership.

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So having a plan in place demonstrates the commitment and leadership of this organisation to really tackling gender equality in the workplace and we know that in our case it's really been our leaders that have made a difference in supporting our job share arrangement.

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The main thing that we have seen that has helped to lift that as an initiative that can work for gender equity is modelling it.

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And so we aim in our work everyday to be those advocates for job sharing.

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So if you take our role at the moment, we have almost 100 staff.

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We have multiple different functional areas from operational teams to intergovernmental policy to teams that develop education and guidance for the early childhood sector.

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We have legal, so we have a diverse range of responsibilities, and we make job sharing work in that context and we think it can work anywhere.

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There are benefits beyond gender equity action that job share provides, which is that you kind of get 2 brains for the price of 1 or 1.2.

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In our case, we do have an overlap day, and we also have ways of working, I think which really benefit more broadly our team, but also everybody that we work with.

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We we've had feedback that we're seamless to communicate with.

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That's because we've got systems set up to enable us to easily hand over day to day and we've got a really great collaborative mindset to the way that we work with each other that then sort of goes in with the rest of our team.

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So I think it's a real example of where you do maybe implement something that has got a gender equity basis to it, but it's got benefits beyond improving gender equity in the workplace.

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Having access to the benefits of the paid parental leave scheme really meant that I was able to provide support to my wife and my daughter when I was becoming a new father and was shortly going to be taking on family and caring responsibilities.

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I was aware that the NSW Government had just announced a new paid parental leave scheme that was expanded to cover all genders.

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The scheme was less than a year old and there was no one that I was aware of in the organisation that had taken significant leave away from work for family and caring responsibilities.

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So I had a level of trepidation in engaging my manager to inform them that I would be taking significant leave off.

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I had a thought that I would be seen as less reliable, less dependable and that I may not be there for my team during the crucial moments as well.

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So I engaged my manager to let them know that this would be the case.

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Having those thoughts and preconceived ideas that they may hinder my future career progression.

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And in reality it was the polar opposite.

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They were highly supportive.

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We worked together on a plan to allow the coverage of the team and the support while I was away and also allow me to transition back to work at the right time as well.

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I know speaking to people in the organisation that they weren't going to access their paid parental leave entitlements because it was too busy at work.

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It wasn't the norm in the organisation as well and I actually had a few people reach out to me and asked me about my experience, and later on they ended up taking and accessing their full benefits.

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So the benefit of having that is that we've seen an increased level of morale and engagement across the team.

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Based on the latest PMES scores for my team, the team feel engaged, valued and supported and think that TAFE is a really inclusive workplace.

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The advice that I would give to someone who may be thinking about taking paid parental leave benefits that may have had the initial concerns, same shared concerns that I had about what does this mean for my role, what does it mean for my future career progressions, How will I be seen in the organisation is to engage with your manager, have a conversation about the intention and work with them on how you can support each other.

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I am Ramesh Shrestha and I work as an Education Support Officer at TAFE Digital in the Children's Education and Care section.

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When I came to Australia in 2017 as an international student, I was doing my bachelor’s with TAFE NSW.

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The first thing I noticed in the class was I was the second male in the class out of 33 students.

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Even while I was doing the course, I tried really hard to get into the sector but even after applying for 40 jobs, I couldn't get a role as an educator.

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Finally, one private provider took a chance.

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But even while working as a casual educator, I would be doing all the cleaning tasks, I'll be moving the furniture, I would be organising the storeroom, doing the dishes.

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And I do believe it was partially because I was a male educator.

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It took a while for me to build that trust with my colleagues that I do have the knowledge, experience and expertise to educate children and plan for their learning.

1:10
Currently I am working at TAFE NSW, and they are more inclusive and their policies support gender equity and diversity, which is great.

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And I think one thing that's coming up and is going to be a significant change is the gender equity action plan, which has a lot of resources for teams and even people in leadership to incorporate that gender diversity.

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A truly gender equitable workplace is where you feel valued, respected and accepted.

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It's a place where you can voice out your opinions and express yourself fully.

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It is a place where you can bring your whole self.

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I think the Gender Equity Action Plan is a great start because when something is written it's read, and when it's read it's heard, and when it's heard it's implemented.

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When leadership is start valuing this process and each and every colleague at the NSW or Department of Education start embedding these practises in their day-to-day operations, I think we can truly build a gender equitable organisation.

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I think another thing that teams can do is bring it into conversations in their staff meeting and day to day operations to see and reflect on what gender diversity looks like within their team and how they can use the Gender Equity Action Plan to support them.

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When we truly value gender equity and bring it into practise, it does not just support the individual but also supports his family and the community as a whole.

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Gender equity is about connection, about care and courageous leadership, and it is the way forward to a progressive society.