Diversity and Inclusion Definitions -

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Introduction:
This paper focuses on The Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Strategy, which
is an Australian policy that applies among all work undertaken by the Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade (DFAT). This policy has been launched in the year 2014, June, as an
Australian’s Aid Policy establishing the equality of gender and women empowerment as a
progressive developmental priority (Angoro 2018). This strategy outlines the effort of the
Government on strengthening the women of the society as well as providing equality across
genders by concreting the ability of engagement in the field of policy dialogue within the region
and beyond and indorsing the international reputation, and working with foreign policy,
development and economic diplomacy in order to take solid steps promoting equality among
gender and women empowerment as central interest in terms of encouraging sustainable
economic growth and poverty reduction in our region (Holmes 2019). The strategy
acknowledges the structures and systems which can play an important part in exacerbating
discriminatory practices. The government of Australia is committed to pursue gender equality
outcomes amongst the international agenda, which has occurred under the appointment of
Natasha Stott Despoja AM as Australia’s second Women and Girl’s Ambassador to provide all
women a powerful voice. In the year 2015, this policy shed light on the Gender Equality Fund
enlightened the emphasis that Australia is expected to implement on gender equality and
empowerment of women in the aid program (Phillip 2015). According to that the women should
get equal opportunity as men, under this the shifting of the norms will occur along with legal
frameworks and other policies regarding equality of gender. The changes in this field of DFAT
needs a commitment from leaders.

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In the ground of gender equality and women empowerment, Australia has been settled as
an international leader. This particular strategy provides guidance in accordance with the
involvement of gender equality in programming, in policy engagement within the department
(George 2019). Its gives Australia the opportunity to share its approach and gathers international
evidence and experience, which has been informed by feedbacks and approaches from members
of the Parliament of Australia and partners, like, multilateral and regional bodies and other
governments along with leading non-governmental organisations (Patel et al. 2014). This
strategy considers the gender as a relation of power, therefore working on such an account aims
on addressing unequal norms of gender that obliges women and men along with intersexual and
transgender people. This is a global issue which is relevant not just in terms of Australia but to
the economic, welfare, foreign and social policies of all other countries (Kushandajani 2019).
The concept of gender equality is centrally about equal rights, opportunities, responsibilities for
both men and women, boys and girls. The issue of gender inequality is a consequence of the
unequal distribution of power between women and men, which worsened by the discrimination,
laws weakness, institutions social relations and policies which results in normalising the
inequality. The international community has documented the vitality of supporting this policy
through the Convention of the Elimination of All Types of Discrimination Against Women, the
Platform of Beijing for Action, the Sustainable Development of 2030 agenda, the Millennium
Development Goals, and in regional, multilateral, policy fora alongside the Group of Twenty.
Besides all this still the condition of women have not been changed and the traces of equality
among men and women cannot be seen (Harris et al. 2016).
The greatest challenge in the field of gender equality alongside women empowerment are
among the Indo-Pacific region (Masud et al. 2016). Research states that over the past decades of

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experiencing the demonstrations the gender equality is correlated and reinforced with the
economic growth, the developmental factor, and it runs in two directions, firstly, gender equality
and women empowerment contribute to development, growth, and stability:
 If the participation in the employment along with the wage gap have been removed than
the women of the society will be able to increase their income up to 76%, which has been
calculated as an outcome of global value in the form of $17 trillion.
 Women who have greater education have healthier and more qualified children, which
decreases the dependency burdens.
 Violence against women damages a societies core value which will be prevented by the
implementation of this policy or strategy.
Secondly, developmental growth, economic development, and globalisation provides the
opportunities in terms of decreasing the inequality among men and women, however some
factor that matters are the kind of growth, the policy setting of a country, political will and
the nature of the economy.
This policy reflects the concentration on the women empowerment and the gender
equality in DFAT’s Strategic Framework between the years 2015 to 2019 and the
development policy of the government, Australian Aid: reducing poverty, promoting
prosperity, enhancing stability, and framework of performance; Making Performance Count:
effectiveness of the Australian Aid and the encouragement of the accountability (Wallbrecher
et al. 2014).
There are three priority guides that work on gender equality, which are mutual reinforced
and inter-connected and imply among various contexts are: