ABSTRACT
A Five Eyes Community member located in Oceania, Australia is closely associated with NATO, the UK and the US in military planning and operations at all levels. In part due to domestic policies driven by a recognised need to improve gender equality in the Australian Defence Force, the Australian defence establishment has made quick and substantial progress in implementing the tasks assigned to it under the national action plan to operationalise gender. This progress has outstripped the pace of inclusion of gender considerations in Australian joint-level doctrine, although a plan is in place to review all joint doctrine and include gender where appropriate, and certain evidence supports the view that this revision is being done productively. In terms of its military engagements with its allies such as Japan and the US, Australia brings gender issues to the fore and heightens their visibility in the multinational context. At the land force level, the Australian Army military planning and decision-making process doctrine has apparently been revised to include gender considerations, but due to its classification it is not available to the public to review. Although older Australian Army doctrine generally lacks any consideration of gender issues, there has been recent important progress as shown by the new operations and the new CIMIC doctrine.
