References to “gender equality” have been removed from the Queensland Office for Women’s website amid claims by former staffers that the Liberal National party government wants to “dewokify” the public service.
Guardian Australia has seen an email from a manager, sent in January, tasking staff with scanning the website for the word “gender” so that it could be “reframed”.
Web archives from that month show six prominently displayed references to “gender equality” or “gender equal” were removed from the Office for Women’s “About” page, including from its mission statement that had said: “We’re working towards a gender equal Queensland.”
“A gender equal Queensland” previously appeared as the first tab on the page’s toolbar. The phrase also appeared in the first sentence of text and was used in the first dot point describing the office’s role.
As of Tuesday, no mention of “gender” appears on that page.
Across the website, comparisons of archived and live pages show more than 20 mentions of “gender” were removed, including in reference to the gender pay gap. Some mentions of “gender equality” remain, including on the homepage.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailFormer department staff said they had received internal requests to have the term “gender” scrubbed from much of the office’s online portal, claiming they were told that the minister for women, Fiona Simpson, deemed the word to be “on the nose” and “loaded”.
In a statement to the Guardian, Simpson said this was “utterly false”.
“The website was recently updated for the launch of Queensland’s first Women’s Economic Security Strategy – which was designed by Queensland women, for Queensland women,” Simpson said.
“While some are worried about words on websites, the Crisafulli government is focused on backing Queensland women.”
The former department staffers, who asked to remain anonymous, alleged their managers relayed to them that the word “gender” should be obscured as it “made the LNP think of the LGBTIQA+ community” and they needed to “dewokify”.
One ex-employee said they pushed back against the requests.
“I was like: ‘Sorry I can’t think of an alternative for gender,’” they said. “Because, I’m sorry, but black and white, on paper, in this instance, gender is men and women and the pay gap that women are experiencing and have been experienced.
“Why are we making this a queer issue?”
During parliamentary estimates last week, the shadow minister for women, Shannon Fentiman, asked the department of women’s director general, Natalie Wilde, why references to phrases like “gender equality” were removed from the website.
Wilde replied that her portfolio “continues routinely to review and update its web presence to improve the user experience for all Queenslanders”.
“Editorial changes to web copy are something that is very operational,” Wilde said. “It is approved and managed through my strategic communication unit and is done very much at a business level.”
As well as removing many instances of the word “gender”, the recent revamp of the Office for Women’s website also included changing its banner colour from purple to blue and stamping it with the slogan “delivering for Queensland” – both of which are associated with the LNP brand.
The Centre for Public Integrity director, Geoffrey Watson SC, has previously criticised such use of the logo across government departments and agencies as politicising the public service.
