The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (the SDA) was enacted to give effect to Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and to protect women as a sex class from discrimination in public and political life.
This timeline tracks changes to the SDA from its foundations in CEDAW through the expanding role of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the contested 2013 amendments that removed the biological definitions of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ and inserted gender identity into the Act.
Taken together, these developments show how a statute that originally gave “pre‑eminence to the rights of women” has come to be interpreted in ways that subordinate women’s sex‑based rights to claims based on gender identity. This is the reason women’s organisations are now calling for legislative reform to restore and clarify those protections and rights. A full list of source documents is at the end of the timeline.