The Minister for Women, Senator Katy Gallagher, has referenced the range of stakeholders she engages with on a day-to-day basis when shaping policy that affects women’s health, safety, privacy, and rights. Yet, there is a glaring omission in this stakeholder landscape: the voices of women most directly affected are being ignored. Why are those of us whose protections and needs are most impacted not recognised as core stakeholders in these vital decisions?
The missing voices
Feminist organisations representing women’s advocacy groups, service providers, survivors, researchers and grassroots leaders across Australia, have been systematically excluded from meaningful consultation on policies that fundamentally affect us. Despite our ongoing efforts to engage through submissions, letters, and international human rights reviews, our voices have been relegated to the periphery whilst those advancing gender identity and sex self-identification have been elevated to the centre of policy-making.
This exclusion is not a mere disappointment: it is a clear breach of Australia’s international obligations. Article 7 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) explicitly requires the active participation of us in the formulation and implementation of government policy and public decision-making at every level. When the Minister for Women speaks of her stakeholders, we should be at the top of that list, not absent from it entirely.
The fact that the Minister appears not to have heard our voices suggests possible failures within her office to relay our concerns, and a possible lack of will in seeking out who we are. Recently, the Minister — and the Prime Minister — received a letter from a feminist coalition calling for the abolition of prostitution in Australia and a National Apology for the women and girls exploited in the sex trade. A simple investigation of the signatories to that letter would reveal our ongoing arguments for the urgent need to restore clarity regarding female-only spaces and services in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, among other crucial protections.
The consequences of excluding women
The results of this exclusion are evident everywhere we look. The 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act, which removed biological definitions and introduced the ambiguous concept of ‘gender identity’, were made without meaningful consultation with women’s groups. The Federal Court’s ruling in Tickle v Giggle has now entrenched the principle that offering female-only spaces risks unlawful discrimination. Female-only services, sports categories, and spaces have become legally contestable or outright unavailable.
Minister Gallagher’s approach of ‘treating everyone equally’ has, in practice, meant erasing our ability to assert basic sexed-based protections when these conflict with the claims of males who identify as female. The conflation of ‘sex’ and ‘gender identity’ has undermined the data integrity required for evidence-based policy and removed our ability to articulate our own needs as a distinct group.
Stifling debate, silencing women
The exclusion extends beyond consultation to the stifling of parliamentary debate itself. In September 2024, Minister Gallagher, as Leader of the Government in the Senate, blocked the first reading of the SDA Amendment (Acknowledging Biological Reality) Bill 2024 — a highly unusual departure from standard practice where first readings are granted as a matter of course. She stated the government would oppose bills that “seek to harm people, including young people,” but provided no explanation of how simply defining biological sex in the Sex Discrimination Act would cause such harm.
This pattern of shutting down debate whilst claiming to protect vulnerable people — and then saying that stakeholders have not raised their concerns with her — reveals the fundamental problem: the Minister is not consulting the right stakeholders. The voices setting policy direction are those who benefit from gender identity self-identification, not those whose rights are being eroded by it.
Time for genuine consultation
We have documented our continuous attempts at stakeholder engagement through submissions to the United Nations, correspondence with government, and published legal analysis. Each has been ignored or dismissed, despite our clear standing as the primary stakeholders affected by these policies.
The Minister for Women needs to expand her understanding of who constitutes a legitimate stakeholder. When policies affect women’s access to female-only spaces, our safety in prisons and refuges, our participation in sport, and our ability to organise as women, then women — not men who identify as women, not gender identity advocacy groups, but us — must be central to the consultation process.
This is about recognising that in a democracy, those most affected by policy should have the strongest voice in shaping it. Minister Gallagher’s current approach violates this basic principle and breaches Australia’s international obligations under CEDAW.
What we’re asking for
The path forward is clear. We call on Minister Gallagher to:
- Publicly recognise women’s groups as essential stakeholders in all policies affecting us
- Institute genuine, independent review processes that centre our voices
- Mandate open consultation before implementing any new ‘gender identity’ policies
- Restore biological definitions and clear sexed-based protections in the SDA
- Issue guidance protecting female-only services and spaces from legal challenge
The expertise and lived experience of women must be brought from the margins to the centre of debate and legislative reform. Only by genuinely engaging with us as the primary stakeholders can the Minister begin to address the policy failures of recent years and meet Australia’s international commitments to us.
When Minister Gallagher next refers to “the range of stakeholders” she deals with daily, women’s voices should be the first she mentions, not the last she remembers.
For the public record, we include a copy of our latest letter to the Minister, below.
