The State Government has outlined its key initiatives to improve gender equality in South Australia, with today’s publication of the Women’s Equality Blueprint 2023-2026.

The Blueprint highlights the current Government’s significant gender equality initiatives to help to achieve equality for women and girls, and address issues which inhibit women and girls from equally participating in the community.

It outlines four priority focus areas which will be addressed to support women’s wellbeing and enable all women in South Australia to prosper. These focus areas are:

*Women’s safety and security – including criminalising coercive control and making electronic monitoring a condition of bail for people charged with certain family and domestic violence offences.

*Leadership and participation – including ensuring all State Government Boards comprise 50 per cent women and holding a Women’s Leadership Symposium in conjunction with the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Adelaide in August.

*Economic wellbeing – such as the already established Women in Business Program and Housing Security for Older Women Taskforce, as well as exploring the possibility of extending portable long service leave to the arts and creative sectors.

*Women’s health – including extending support for free sanitary products in public schools.

The Blueprint also describes how the State Government will seek to realise its vision of making South Australia a fair and inclusive state, in which everyone can equally and actively participate in the economy and all aspects of community life.

Current statistics highlighted in the Blueprint show:

*279,300 women in South Australia (39 per cent) have experienced violence (physical and/or sexual) since the age of 15.
*40 per cent of homicides in South Australia are family and domestic violence related.
*Men are 1.5 times more likely to hold managerial positions than women.
*For every dollar a man makes, a woman earns only 93 cents in South Australia.

A copy of the Women’s Equality Blueprint is available here.

Attributable to Katrine Hildyard

I am delighted to release the Women’s Equality Blueprint which will act as a roadmap to guide us towards achieving a fairer society in South Australia over the next three years.

Work is being undertaken right across government and we are making good progress, but there is still more to be done.

Achieving gender equality requires a collective effort, and it is crucial that we work alongside the private and community sectors and different tiers of government to identify gaps and design best practice approaches.