We provide working women with information and support to enforce their workplace rights and entitlements. Knowing our legal rights and entitlements enables working women to build support in our workplaces, join together in union with our co-workers and win change. 

Don't know how gender affects your workplace yet, or not sure where to start? Set up a WRAW Chat for your workgroup to identify areas of common concern.

But enforcing our minimum legal rights and entitlements is just the first step. 

Where we differ from a community legal service is our advocacy. Pulling up employers on their failings and even taking individual cases to court is important, but if we want to win widescale change (and we do) we need to build the case for new rights, new reforms, and new obligations. 

Currently, we are campaigning for change in these areas:

Preventing companies from silencing victims/survivors of sexual harassment by banning "Non-Disclosure Agreements".

These are confidentiality clauses forced on women who experience sexual harassment at work, which prevent them from warning co-workers about the perpetrator, speaking to the media about their experiences, or even seeking support from friends. They are enforced to protect brands from consequences, at a grave psychological cost to victim/survivors.

Making sure hospitality venues are safe for women workers and patrons.

We want to tie venues' license to operate and serve alcohol to their ability to keep women workers and women customers safe from sexual violence and harassment. Just like you can lose your license for irresponsible service of alcohol, inattention to physical hazards or unsafe food preparation, we think you should lose your ability to trade if your training, policies and work practices continually endanger your women staff and customers.  

The Victorian Working Women’s Centre is a VTHC project, capitalising on VTHC’s skills and experience in advocating for successful reforms including:

• Winning the world’s first family violence leave in 2016. This has resulted in paid leave forming part of the National Employment Standards (NES)
• The introduction of the 2018 Occupational Health and Safety Regulations to address workplace gendered violence and sexual harassment through a workplace health and safety lens
• Supporting women workers enter traditionally male dominated industries including workplace training and reform via targets under the Building Industry Consultative Committee and the Building Equality policy, which lead to the successful Women OnSite pilot project
• Advocating for the publication of workplace wage gap data
• Delivering specialised Safe Respectful Workplaces training to workers, employers, unions, TAFEs and community organisations to address gender violence at the work

We deliver education and training to employers, unions, TAFEs, universities and women’s organisations about how to address workplace gendered violence and support workers experiencing family violence.

We collaborate to research, identify and implement practical plans regarding specific workplace issues for women on an industry and cross industry basis, and to address gaps to improve the lives of working women.

We connect women workers who experience issues at work with networks of support, or the individualised services they need. The Victorian Working Women's Centre is currently not funded to provide individualised legal advocacy, but our deep knowledge of workplace law enables us to support women workers to access the legal or social services they may need.