This paper is part of the symposium on "Gender and Assessment of Physics in Context: Getting It Right!" It examines ways in which current practices privilege the "masculine" over the "feminine" and presents an agenda for gender inclusive assessment practices. It is argued that physics like other domains of knowledge, is a constructed entity, and the way it has been interpreted by school curriculum and assessment practices has ensured it has strong links through hegemonic masculinity to power in our society. A case study of assessment practices from Victoria, Australia, indicates how some changes in a state-wide end-of-schooling credential, the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), dramatically changed the achievement of girls relative to boys in physics. A twenty year bias in assessment, in favor of boys, was turned around in physics when a wider variety of learning activities, skills and tasks were valued by becoming part of the work requirement and common assessment task format for the VCE. This section of the symposium also demonstrates that whilst this sudden shift in performance challenges what we define as "excellence" and "competence" in physics, it is not true for all girls or all boys. Socioeconomic factors intersect with gender performance profiles when data of girls in the VCE is collated by geographical region. Contains 69 references. (Author)