Driving gender equality through policy leads to public service medal

It was this job which brought her to Canberra in 2005, and eventually, to the role of head of the Office for Women, within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

"I look back at it now and think that job - which was really the gateway to it all and what ... has become quite an interesting and diverse career - it still helps me now.

"Because I'm so connected to ... the actual women we're doing the work for."

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Arriving in Canberra from her hometown of Adelaide on a short-term project really opened up her pathway through the public service, Ms Stratford said.

Since that time, she has worked on landmark projects including the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, family violence responses during COVID-19 and the 1800RESPECT national domestic violence service.

Her work in gender equality and women's policy has been recognised with a Public Service Medal this year, alongside 77 other public servants across state and federal governments.

Defence secretary Greg Moriarty was meanwhile appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia for his distinguished leadership in the public sector.

Nominations for the honour are made within departments or agencies, and awardees are recommended by the relevant minister.

During her time in the Office for the Women, she worked on the rollout of the gender impact assessment.

Implemented last year, this requires all public servants to consider the impact of all their policy proposals on gender equality, and provides a framework to do so.

"It is one of the most fundamental and essential reforms to government policy making in the last 20 years," she said.

"And the reason for that is that it means that anyone working on policy, whether that's writing a cabinet submission, putting a proposal to a minister, and looking at how something's working in real life ... has to now think about what it means for women particularly.

"That has not been a feature of our formal policy making framework until now, and so it's left space for people to make assumptions or apply their own beliefs and values to that advice and those decisions."

Now, Ms Stratford is looking to the many economic obstacles still holding women back, as chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy.

"What became clearer and clearer over time, as I looked at that space was that we're really overlooking some pretty galling statistics around economic inequality," she said.

She credits her Public Service Medal to the help of colleagues, and feminist mentors throughout her career.