The Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs has produced its annual snapshot on the status of gender equality in Queensland.
Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk said the 2020 Gender Equality Report Cards focused on four priority areas including participation and leadership, economic security, safety, and health and wellbeing.
“The Government supports equality and justice for women and these report cards are a way we can track our progress,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
She said the latest report cards were part of the Queensland Women’s Strategy and demonstrated continued improvements in leadership.
However, they also showed that gender inequality persisted across all priority areas.
She said that to achieve real change on gender equality, action was required across the nation.
“That is why I asked my National Cabinet colleagues recently to consider a National Women’s Summit focusing predominantly on women’s economic security — which was supported,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
Attorney-General, Minister for Justice, Minister for Women and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Shannon Fentiman said that with regard to the safety of women and girls, the report card showed the rate of sexual violence against them was still far too high.
“Almost 85 per cent of victims of sexual assault are females and women are more than three times more likely to be killed by a partner,” Ms Fentiman said.
“Violence against women is never acceptable and the current social dialogue about these issues highlights that we can all do more to try to support women and eliminate it from our community.”
Ms Fentiman said the COVID-19 pandemic had demonstrated how women could be disproportionately impacted, economically and socially, by such events.
The Department’s 2020 Gender Equality Report Cards can be accessed at this PS News link.
