The Gender Equity Survey commissioned by The Jewish Independent and the National Council for Jewish Women revealed important insights into people’s perceptions and experiences of gender equality, discrimination and harassment in Jewish community organisations in NSW.

Some of the key findings are summarised here, together with a comparison to the corresponding data from a Victorian survey conducted in 2020-2021.

While the large majority of NSW respondents indicated early in the survey that gender equality is valued in their organisations and that gender discrimination and sexual harassment are not tolerated, agreement on these points was not emphatic. A significant minority (up to 1 in 4 in some cases) were unsure or disagreed with these statements. (In the Victorian survey, there was a lower rate of disagreement on these points.) The doubts of this minority were certainly borne out in the findings revealed subsequently throughout the survey, namely:

Women were more than twice as likely as men to have experienced gender-based harassment and to have been impacted by gender-based discrimination. The same pattern was evident in the Victorian data.

1 in 10 people reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment in their organisation. The most common forms of harassment were “intrusive questions about your private life or physical appearance”, “sexually suggestive jokes or comments” and “unwelcome touching, hugging and other physical contact”. These findings were closely mirrored in the Victorian survey.