The policy analysis was before my time, but this is my understanding of what happened.
When the gender implication statement was introduced, the Ministry for Women created a gender analysis training program for policy analysts. We can share with you what that looked like. It was implemented through the government agencies, but we found, and we know from all the research about how learning happens, that a one- or two-day course really isn't effective to ensure that people have the tools, the ability, and the awareness to do good quality gender analysis.
To put it candidly, we know this isn't the way to learn. Probably for those who are already inclined to think through a gender lens, it advanced them. It also provided a framework for agencies grappling with these issues. But because we found that within the policy community there was a lot of turnover, a lot of this depends on the attitudes of the leaders and the policy managers, and again it is quite a lot of change.
We're not convinced it was a fully useful way of ensuring that gender analysis came through. We can share all our materials with you, and as I've said, we've taken the approach that our research should actually be selective around the policies that we engage with and engage with in some depth.
Rather than kind of taking what we would colloquially call a spray paint approach, i.e., to try to touch everybody lightly, we've gone for a process that's really deeply embedded in some of the key policy initiatives. It's a strategy, which from our perspective, has been more impactful for New Zealand women, because we actually have quality gender analysis coming through very key pieces of work.