Across Australia, governments are enacting legislation that strips away women’s sex-based protections and rights whilst systematically excluding us from the rooms where decisions are made. But the problem runs deeper than flawed consultation processes: even when governments do consult us, consultation alone does not satisfy Australia’s obligations under CEDAW (the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). The convention requires something far more demanding: active, rigorous assessment of policy impact on women and girls: not token meetings designed to tick a box.
The distinction matters enormously. Consultation can be — and routinely is — used as political cover for decisions already made. Impact assessment is different: it’s an obligation to analyse whether a policy will harm women, and to prove it won’t before implementation. This is how impact statements force accountability: they eliminate the excuse of ignorance. Once the assessment is published alongside the Bill, parliamentarians can no longer vote whilst claiming they didn’t understand the consequences for women. Either they engage with the evidence, or they openly accept documented harms. It becomes transparent choice rather than hidden failure. Understanding this distinction is crucial for holding governments to account.
CEDAW is about substantive equality, not procedural tick-boxes
At its core, CEDAW is about substantive equality: outcomes that demonstrably advance women’s rights; it’s not merely ticking procedural boxes. This means states must actively scrutinise how laws, policies, and legislative changes will affect women and girls, identifying and remedying discriminatory effects before implementation. The question is not ‘did we ask women?’ but rather, ‘will this policy disadvantage women?’ So, where does the obligation sit?
- Article 2 requires states to pursue “by all appropriate means and without delay” a policy of eliminating discrimination. This includes modifying or abolishing discriminatory laws, regulations, customs, and practices. Notice the language: ‘all appropriate means’ and ‘without delay’. This is not a passive obligation to listen when women complain. It is an active duty to hunt down and address discrimination wherever it hides.
- Article 3 obligates states to take “all appropriate measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of women”. The CEDAW Committee has consistently interpreted this as requiring states to demonstrate — not assume — that policy will advance women’s equality. Aspiration is not enough. Evidence is required.
- Article 5 demands action to eliminate stereotypes and practices based on the idea of women’s inferiority or on stereotyped roles. This is the heart of many current failures: policy that treats women’s reproductive capacity as a commodity, or that erases sex-based categories under which women seek refuge, reinforces precisely the stereotypes CEDAW forbids.
- Article 7 guarantees women’s right to participate in policy formulation and implementation. This is not satisfied by tokenistic or selective consultation; it requires genuine engagement with women’s organisations on matters affecting our sex-based protections and rights, and it also demands that women’s objections — including those from women with diverse or critical views of government proposals — are meaningfully considered and addressed.
General Recommendation No. 28: Results, not process
The CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No. 28 on the core obligations of states parties confirms that the Convention is results-oriented. The Committee makes this explicit: states cannot simply report that ‘we held a roundtable’ and call that compliance; they must demonstrate that policy doesn’t produce discrimination. This is the crucial shift: from ‘we consulted’ to ‘we proved the policy is not discriminatory’.
The Committee stresses that states must address intersectionality (para 18, how sex-based discrimination compounds with other factors), ensure substantive equality (para 20, not just formal equality), and take proactive measures to remedy entrenched disadvantage (para 28). This could include conducting impact assessments that examine whether policies will entrench stereotypes, create new (or perpetuate old) markets in women’s bodies, limit women’s participation, or erode sex-based protections and rights. Impact assessment is not optional decoration on good policy: it is a core compliance mechanism.
Why consultation alone is insufficient
Consultation on matters affecting women and girls fails in multiple, systemic ways, and at AAWAA we have documented through our blogs and submissions a clear pattern across Australian jurisdictions.
Consultation can be selective by design: commercial fertility operators and LGBTQIA+ lobby groups get early access to policy development and closed-door briefings; women’s organisations fighting to protect female-only crisis services, prisons, and sports must scramble to find out the Bill exists. And then it can arrive too late to matter: by the time women’s groups are told a Bill is coming, the government has already locked in its core position and consultation becomes an exercise in damage limitation.
This can be deliberately opaque: governments do not typically publish who was consulted, who received two-hour meetings and who got 15 minutes, or how stakeholder feedback actually shaped the final Bill. And it can be captured by commercial interests: the fertility industry, prostitution activists, and sex self-ID activists have professional lobbyists, legal teams, and sustained access; women’s groups working on a shoestring budget with only volunteer labour to protect our sex-based rights cannot compete on those terms.
But most crucially, even perfect consultation doesn’t prove the policy isn’t discriminatory. CEDAW’s test is forensic: Does this law or policy have the effect of disadvantaging women, creating or perpetuating markets in women’s bodies, eroding our sex-based protections, or reinforcing harmful stereotypes? You can only answer that question through rigorous, sex-disaggregated analysis. Minutes from a consultation meeting cannot answer it. A survey with tick-box responses cannot answer it. Only structured, documented impact assessment can.
Australian examples: Where women were excluded and impact assessment never happened
Our submissions to UN bodies and correspondence with special procedures have documented a systematic pattern of how recent Australian legislative processes have excluded women whilst prioritising commercial and ideological interests.
NSW Equality Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
The NSW Legislative Assembly referred the Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023 — which amended 20 different laws at once, removing bans on commercial surrogacy, decriminalising pimping, and allowing sex self-identification — to the Committee on Community Services for inquiry.
Despite acknowledging large public interest the Committee took deliberate steps to ensure women’s voices were excluded. It refused to hold a public inquiry. Instead, it restricted participation to an online survey that accepted only Likert-scale responses: no prose submissions, no space to articulate why women opposed the Bill. The Committee invited only selected, undisclosed stakeholders, with the majority representing one side of the debate. It deliberately excluded women’s groups who would be directly harmed: those operating female-only crisis services, those representing incarcerated women, those fighting for women’s privacy in hospital wards and sport.
This process was, by design, a process that silenced women.
But beyond the procedural exclusion, no impact assessment was ever conducted. The NSW Government never assessed whether removing sex-based legal categories would collapse female-only crisis services for women escaping male violence. It never examined how decriminalising pimping would affect trafficking and exploitation of women. It never considered whether weakening commercial surrogacy prohibitions would facilitate systematic exploitation of economically vulnerable women, both in Australia and overseas. It never evaluated how sex self-ID would affect women in prisons, hospital wards, and sport. The policy was developed, selectively ‘consulted’ on, and advanced to Parliament without any systematic analysis of its impact on women and girls.
Western Australia Births, Deaths, and Marriages Amendment Bill 2024
The WA sex self-identification Bill — allowing anyone over 12 to change their legal sex multiple times via administrative process — received no public consultation whatsoever. A proposal to send the Bill to committee for review was voted down 47 to 5, with members voting along party lines. This was an extraordinarily fast-tracked process with no opportunity for women who depend on sex-based legal categories for access to crisis services, safety, and privacy to be heard.
Again, no impact assessment examined how a “presumption of inclusion” via sex self-ID would affect female-only crisis shelters, prisons, hospital wards, and sport. There was no analysis of whether allowing children aged 12+ to change legal sex through undefined “appropriate clinical treatment'” would lead to automatic gender affirmation and medicalisation, with all the consequences that follows. No one examined how eliminating female-only spaces would affect women’s safety, privacy, and dignity.
The same pattern has been repeated with Western Australia’s current Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Bill 2025. The Bill emerged from a ministerial panel chaired by an ART clinician and supported by industry insiders — a clear conflict of interest prioritising commercial growth over women’s rights. It bypassed both Law Reform Commission review and full parliamentary committee scrutiny. Women’s groups, independent experts, and feminist advocates were excluded from meaningful participation whilst fertility industry representatives and clinicians with commercial interests led the process. Once again, no impact assessment examined how the Bill would affect women who become surrogate mothers, particularly young women (the Bill would allow 18-year-olds with no previous birth experience to be recruited as surrogates), or how eliminating pre-conception approval processes would increase risks of exploitation.
Queensland: Closed consultations with LGBTQIA+ groups, tokenistic engagement with women
Even where Queensland referred its sex self-ID Bill to committee and allowed public submissions (385 were received and published), the process fell dramatically short of CEDAW obligations. The Queensland Law Society commented that “meaningful and robust consultations with stakeholders’ are essential for effective law. Short consultations held during the Christmas shutdown ‘will not yield the best legislation.”
A dissenting committee member provided the most damning evidence: the Government had begun early and closed consultations with LGBTQIA+ groups — giving them early access to policy development — but engaged women’s groups only in 2022, under public pressure, with one information session rather than actual consultation. That member observed: “The development of this Bill could have benefited immeasurably by being conducted in a transparent, respectful and consultative manner with the whole community over an extended period of time.”
The pattern is unmistakable: LGBTQIA+ organisations are invited, resourced, and embedded in advisory structures at the policy development stage; women’s groups must monitor parliamentary websites and fight for last-minute inclusion — if we’re included at all. This is not accident. It is design.
What mandatory Women and Girls Impact Assessment would look like
To comply with CEDAW Articles 2, 3, 5, and 7, Australian jurisdictions should introduce a standing requirement that every Bill, regulation, and major policy be accompanied by a Women and Girls Impact Statement demonstrating, we suggest, six key elements.
- Sex-disaggregated analysis establishes what the current position of women and girls is in the relevant field. What sex-specific data exists? Where are the gaps? This forms the baseline against which policy impact can be measured.
- Stereotype assessment (Article 5) examines whether the policy institutionalises harmful gender roles or sex stereotypes or reinforces the idea that women’s bodies or reproductive capacity are commodities. Does it erase sex-based categories in areas where women are vulnerable? Does it entrench the commodification of women?
- Participation check (Article 7) documents whether women’s organisations — including those likely to query the draft policy — were consulted meaningfully at the development stage, and whether our objections were addressed. Were we in the room from the start, or fighting to get in once requests for public input were made (if they were made at all)?
- Risk of sex-based harm identifies how the policy might create economic coercion (into surrogacy, into prostitution), pressure on mothers, erosion of maternal recognition, loss of female-only spaces for crisis support and safety, or destruction of sex-based protections and rights in law.
- Mitigation and alternatives records what changes were made to reduce harm to women and what alternatives were considered. Why were certain options rejected? This creates a public record of decision-making and makes it impossible to claim that discriminatory outcomes were unforeseen.
- Monitoring and data specifies what sex-disaggregated data will be collected to prove no discrimination is occurring, and how impact will be monitored over time. This turns assessment from a one-off compliance document into an ongoing accountability mechanism.
This transforms consultation from an episodic tick-box exercise into systematic, rigorous assessment that centres women’s lived reality and makes impact assessment transparent, published, and subject to independent scrutiny.
What we’re pushing for: A four-step framework
To establish real accountability and ensure compliance with CEDAW, Australia must move away from ad-hoc consultation of ‘friendly’ women (which serves as political cover for decisions already made) and adopt a robust, systematic approach that places the analysis of impact on women and girls at the centre of every legislative process. What we are pushing for is a four-step framework that embeds sex-based protections and rights throughout law and policy development, making it impossible for governments to exclude women’s voices or hand over policy development to commercial and ideological interests.
The first element is a legislated duty requiring all Bills and significant subordinate legislation to include a Women and Girls Impact Statement demonstrating compliance with CEDAW. This creates a legal obligation rather than a voluntary practice. It makes it impossible for governments to claim they didn’t know a policy would harm women; the assessment forces them to ask the question and document the answer.
The second element is a scope clause that directs particular attention to women in vulnerable situations: those on low incomes, migrant women, Aboriginal women, women with disability, young mothers, women in detention, and women escaping violence. This ensures that impact assessments don’t treat all women as a homogeneous group but recognises how sex-based discrimination intersects with other forms of disadvantage and vulnerability.
The third element requires that Impact Statements are tabled with the Bill, making them publicly available so Parliament and the community can scrutinise the government’s CEDAW reasoning. This destroys the option of backroom assessments that disappear. Impact assessment becomes a public-facing statement that shapes parliamentary debate and holds government accountable for its reasoning.
The fourth element establishes a review and accountability mechanism: a standing Parliamentary committee or independent CEDAW-compliance body that reports annually on the quality of Impact Statements and recommends improvements. Unlike current practice — where government departments claim internal processes or a ‘gender’ branch provide oversight — this independent review ensures transparency and public scrutiny well beyond the limited, discretionary checks that have failed to protect women’s rights. It also creates an institutional home for ongoing scrutiny and ensures that impact assessment becomes a rigorous, evolving practice rather than a bureaucratic exercise.
Together, these elements ensure that policy affecting our sex-based protections and rights isn’t developed in closed rooms with commercial stakeholders who profit from women’s vulnerability. They restore power to women, where it belongs.
The stakes: What failure looks like
Without mandatory impact assessment, expect more NSW Bills: 20 laws rewritten in weeks, ‘consultation’ restricted to online surveys, women’s groups excluded, parliament never told what the impact on women will be. Expect more WA fast-tracks: legislation voted through 47-5 along party lines with no public scrutiny, no time for women to respond, sex-based categories erased in the dark. Expect more Queensland tokenism: LGBTQIA+ advocates embedded in policy development for years; women invited to one information session after the government has already decided.
Expect more policy developed with commercial interests at the table and women on the outside, not even knowing to look in. Expect more surrogacy frameworks written with fertility industry input and no analysis of how they exploit vulnerable women. Expect more prostitution law ‘reform’ designed by decriminalisation advocates and never assessed for impact on women in the sex trade. Expect more sex self-identification law that eliminates female-only spaces without anyone analysing what women will lose. Expect more dissent, more agitation, more difficult questions to Parliamentarians, and far greater resolve from women to persist until our rights and concerns are truly addressed.
And expect CEDAW to remain what it has become: a treaty Australia signs with great ceremony and then ignores. We are calling Australia back to our international obligations and demanding the restoration of women to the centre of decisions about our own protections and rights.
