Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

CSIRO – AWEI 2021 Submission

The AWEI is broken up into 10 sections. Section 1 has 4 sub-sections. Organisations can choose to “carry over” points from this section for up to 3 years. Sections 9-10 must be completed each year to gain points.

S2 Q1 – Expertise

CSIRO has used Pride in Diversity services for 17 training sessions during the assessment period.

S2 Q2 – Documented Strategy

• CSIRO’s organisation SAGE (Science in Australia Gender Equity) has targets for transgender inclusion.
• The CSIRO PRIDE Network uses the AWEI as a guide to their strategic activities throughout the year. CSIRO’s inclusion activities are shaped by ACON.

S2 Q3 – LGBTQ Advisory

The CSIRO PRIDE Network were called upon to advise in a number of scenarios including how to describe “gender” in a children’s science publication.

S3 Q18 – Intersex Allies

CSIRO have promoted ‘Intersex Awareness’ in a number of ways internally and externally.

In 2020 the CSIRO published a profile on botanist Frank Zich, linking ‘intersex’ plants with sex variation in humans.

But like humans, flowers have a wide range of sex diversity in their community. Flowers can be female, male, or have variations of both sexes in one flower. Some flowers can vary their sex characteristics during the course of one day. They can be male in the morning and female in the afternoon!

CSIRO

S4 Q21 – Days of Significance

Note the number of activities and effort CSIRO have gone to to earn the 2/2 points.

• Wear It Purple Quiz
• Week-long photo competition
• Panel discussion
• A training session
• attended by 100 employees
• Promotion of their online LGBTIQ awareness training module
• Prizes – including the book About a Girl, promoting childhood transition.
• Additionally promoting Wear It Purple Day
  • Internal news article
  • All-staff email
  • Another internal news article
• Evaluating success of the promotion activities – analysing the engagement on Yammer (internal corporate social media), and by conducting and analysing a survey.
• Acknowledging World AIDS Day by
  • corporate email
  • 20 minute presentation by Deputy CEO of Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (note – ACON is a board member)
• Additionally, the intranet has dedicated pages for
  • Transgender Day of Visibility
  • Lesbian Day of Visibility
  • Pan Visibility Day
  • International Non-Binary People’s Day
  • LGBTQ STEM (Science Technology Engineering Maths) Day

S4 Q22 – Visibility in the Workplace

Make it mandatory, without making it mandatory…”Whilst use of personal pronouns [in email signatures] is optional, every example on the CSIRO intranet includes this”.

S7 Q38 – LGBTQ Analysis of AWEI Survey Data

CSIRO have used unhappiness with flexible working arrangements to justify creation of a new leave type for gender affirmation.

S10 Q43 – Other Work – Removal of Sex-Based Language From Enterprise Agreement

CSIRO report ACON that their PRIDE Network successfully removed sex-based provisions from the Enterprise Agreement covering 5500 staff.

The focus of the Pride@CSIRO’s statement of claims was in relation to removal of gendered language from the EA. The majority of the claims were accepted except the clause on maternity leave.

CSIRO, AWEI 2021

AWEI 2021 Scorecard

• CSIRO has achieved 167/200 – the minimum score required to achieve the GOLD ranking in 2021.
• CSIRO has carried over a number of points from their previous submission. Points from section 1 may be carried over for up to 3 years.

Feedback

The reviewer has made a number of comments against items where full points have not been awarded:

• S1 Q15 – “Unisex” signs are not acceptable for the toilets
• S3 Q12 – The PRIDE network must be involved in onboarding new recruits
• S6 Q35 – CEO needs to speak at events
• S6 Q36 – ACON requires government agencies to evidence how many people attended events
• S10 Q43 – Lots of the additional work wasn’t substantial enough to gain a single point

Invoices

Two invoices totalling $13,200.

• Standard membership for 2021 – $6,600
• Standard membership for 2022 – $6,600

Survey Results

Not supplied.

See Also

CSIRO announcement about attaining gold status in 2020 (archive link).