Perverse and often baffling: the efficacy of Australia’s equal employment opportunity regulatory framework

Abstract

This thesis investigates why the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 2000 (Commonwealth.) and the associated regulatory framework has not achieved its espoused aims of significantly increasing the advancement of women in Australian organisations. Australian scholarship has identified a range of flaws in this legislation and its capacity to effectively address women’s disadvantage in organisations. The aim of this thesis is to examine the nexus between the legislation and specific organisations in order to develop a deeper understanding of the legislation is being interpreted in different organisational contexts and why such interpretations are serving to undermine legal influence. Accordingly the thesis considers organisational factors that influence the extent to which EEO legislation can effectively address sex segregation in the workplace. By applying the concept of ‘managerialisation of law’ it demonstrates how the response to EEO laws by non-legal professionals and managers affects efforts designed to increase the representation of women at senior levels. The concept of ‘gender culture’ is also used to analyse intra-organisational social forces that influence the efficacy of EEO initiatives. Within this conceptual framework, qualitative data is used to expose the experiences of women managers in organisations.

The thesis focuses on three case studies to provide an in-depth investigation of how organisations address gender equity in the workplace and how this varies across different contexts. Each case study represents a different sector of Australia’s economy: the public, private and nonprofit sectors are examined through a university, a financial services organisation and a community service organisation. The organisations in the sample have a public reputation for being representative of Australian ‘best practice’ in gender equity and are amongst the winners from the EOWA’s Annual Best practice for the advancement of women award and the EOWA’s Employer of Choice for Women citation. Therefore an analysis of how they address equal opportunity provides the empirical backbone for understanding how the legislation is refracted through organisational processes. What emerges from these cases is an illustration of a flawed regulatory framework and organisational forces combine to impede EEO efforts and fail to overcome existing barriers that prevent the advancement of women to senior organisational levels.