97% of Australian HR professionals measure gender in their organisation’s diversity profile. Only 60% measure disability.
That gap explains something bigger than measurement. It’s why good, well-argued cases for disability inclusion keep losing budget battles they should win on merit alone — and why knowing what to prioritise for 2027 starts with a number, not a conviction.
Institutions only see what’s been rendered auditable
Anthropologist Marilyn Strathern has a name for this: audit culture. Organisations only act on claims that have been made countable, comparable, trackable — anything else is, to the machinery that actually allocates budget, close to invisible. Not disputed. Invisible.
Gender pay reporting shows the mechanism by contrast. It didn’t get funded and tracked because organisations started valuing gender equity more. It got funded because WGEA made it measurable — mandated, published, comparable year on year — and once it existed in that form, the ordinary business of governance could finally act on it.
Disability inclusion mostly hasn’t made that jump yet. That 97/60 split comes from the Australian HR Institute — and the same report names disability as one of the most under-represented groups in Australian workplaces. That’s not two separate facts. It’s the same one twice. What the organisation can’t yet count is also what it isn’t acting on.
Here’s the harder version of that point: organisations don’t fail to measure things at random. They measure what’s already been forced into the category of a legitimate, reputationally costly risk. Sexism got there — expensively, slowly, through decades of legal and media pressure — and gender pay reporting is one of the results. Ableism mostly hasn’t been forced into that category yet. Not because it’s less real or less damaging, but because it’s still, in most organisations, the more socially acceptable exclusion to leave uncounted.
What this means for the case you’re building right now
If you’re shaping a 2027 pitch this September or October, the real task isn’t a better moral argument. It’s giving the organisation something it can actually count.
The fastest way to do that, if you have nothing yet: add one voluntary disclosure question to whatever engagement or culture survey you already run this cycle. It doesn’t need to be sophisticated. It needs to exist — a rough number clears the bar a values statement never will.
If you already have something — a past engagement survey, a completed assessment, a partial disclosure figure sitting in an old report — the job isn’t to collect more data yet. It’s to make what you have repeatable and comparable, the way WGEA’s numbers are: tracked in the same form year on year, not a one-off snapshot nobody’s checked since. A single measurement proves a gap existed once. A repeated one proves whether it’s closing, which is the version of evidence that actually survives a budget conversation past the first year.
The comparison that does the most work: what’s already measured, sitting next to what isn’t. Gender pay reporting exists because sexism became too costly, too public, and too legally exposed to leave unmeasured. Disability measurement mostly doesn’t exist yet because ableism hasn’t been forced to the same threshold. That’s worth saying plainly in the room, not just implying — it names the actual double standard, not just the data gap.
The line that travels furthest in the room: not “this is the right thing to do,” but “we’ve already built the measurement for one dimension of diversity. The one with the worst gap isn’t in it yet. That’s not a resourcing question — it’s a decision someone made, and it’s fair to ask who and why.”
What a number actually tells you to prioritise
There’s a second thing a number does, beyond winning the budget argument — and it’s arguably the more useful one. Before you have it, “improve disability inclusion” is a direction, not a plan. You’re choosing between hiring pipeline, disclosure trust, physical access, promotion pathways, accommodation processes, with no way to tell which one is actually your organisation’s worst gap versus a generic industry-wide one.
A number changes that, even a rough one. One large public transport agency’s own recently published plan found a 1.9-point gap between staff who formally disclosed a disability and staff who anonymously reported having one — 4.1% versus 6.0%. That single figure doesn’t just make a funding case. It points at something specific: whatever they prioritise in 2027, disclosure trust has to be in it, because they now have evidence, not a guess, that it’s where their particular gap sits.
That’s the real order of operations. Measure first, even roughly. Let the number tell you what your organisation’s actual priority is. Then build the funding case for that specific thing — which is a much easier case to make than a generic one, because it’s backed by a number instead of a hope.
Where to point your first number
This isn’t a ranked list of what works — that’s exactly the wrong instinct, since the whole argument above is that the right answer depends on your own data, not a generic best-practice order. Every item on it is a place ableism is currently allowed to operate unmeasured. That’s a list of where a first measurement tends to be worth pointing, so you’re not staring at a blank page deciding where to start:
- Disclosure trust — do people feel safe naming a disability internally, and does the gap between who’s formally identified and who privately would say yes tell you anything?
- Hiring pipeline — does disclosing at application stage change callback rates, and would you actually know if it did?
- Accommodation process — are requests granted or rejected against a standard anyone’s written down, or does it depend on who happens to receive the request?
- Promotion pathway — does representation quietly drop at each career stage, or does it hold steady from entry level up?
- Physical or digital access — can someone actually use the space or service day to day, not just meet what a compliance checklist asked for?
Pick one, measure it roughly this year, and let what you find tell you what 2027 is actually for.
If you hold positional or budget authority
Ask plainly whether your organisation measures disability the way it measures gender. If the answer is no, that gap is the actual finding — not a footnote to raise later, but the thing that needs fixing before next year’s case can be heard as anything more than a values statement.
Before your next budget conversation, do the work yourself: get the rough number, and the direct comparison to what’s already funded. Whichever room you’re walking into — your executive sponsor, the board committee, whoever actually signs off — can only act on what’s already been counted. Bring it already counted.
If you don’t hold that authority
You can still do this work without a Head of P&C’s title or a seat on the executive team. Draft the number you wish existed, and name specifically why it doesn’t yet — that draft is the real first version of the case whoever holds that title will eventually have to make.
If your organisation already runs an engagement or culture survey, ask whoever owns it whether one voluntary disability question could be added this cycle. That’s a small, concrete ask, not an abstract one — and small concrete asks get said yes to far more often than abstract ones.
Over to you
Where has a genuinely good argument in your organisation lost to something that simply had a number attached? I’m bringing this exact question to a live DIN conversation this month — discussing what people are actually finding, while there’s still time to use it before 2027 is decided.
Sources
Strathern, M. (2000), Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy
Australian HR Institute, The State of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Australian Workplaces (2023)
Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Employer Gender Pay Gaps Report (2024–25)
Work With Me
If you’re building that case right now and want a second read on the number, the comparison, or the framing before it goes to your executive sponsor or the board, that’s exactly the kind of conversation a free intro call is for.
Ainslee Hooper Consulting works with organisations on:
- DIAP development and review
- Governance and committee reviews
- Co-design and stakeholder engagement
- Disability Inclusion Outcomes Framework™
- The Inclusion Lens
📅 Book a free intro conversation 📋 Workplace Disability Inclusion Assessment (free resource) 🧭 Framework Strategy Call
Making Inclusion Work is written by Ainslee Hooper, disability inclusion consultant and applied anthropologist. Remove invisible barriers. Reduce the risk of ableism.
