Sara Charlesworth
Biographic Data
| ID | 4144206 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara Charlesworth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara |
| FAMILY NAME | Charlesworth |
| SIGNATURE | CHARLESWORTH S |
| AFFILIATIONS | RMIT University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6975-9283 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 140 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Recent interpretations & constructions of equality regulation in the Fair Work Act 2009
Collective bargaining and low-paid women workers: The promise of supported bargaining
This paper assesses the promise of the supported bargaining (SB) stream of multi-employer bargaining to address persistently low wages in feminised industries. Introduced in 2022 amendments to Australia's Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), the SB stream replaces the failed low-paid bargaining stream which also sought to widen access to collective bargaining for low-paid workers. We outline the substantive changes introduced by the SB stream: in the contex…
The Production of Employment Conditions for Migrant Care Workers: Cross National Perspectives
There is widespread scholarly recognition that migrant long-term care (LTC) workers experience relatively poorer work conditions than local LTC workers. We focus here on the ways in which migration and employment regulation intersect in formal LTC markets to produce working conditions for migrant workers. Drawing on cross-national comparisons between Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom we explore: firstly, the forms of employment re…
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Introduction: Policies and Practices Shaping Long-Term Care: Between an Inclusivity Ethos and Service Delivery Realities
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Ageing in Space: Remaking Community for Older Adults
In this paper, we explore the needs of older adults for social interaction by investigating how local and everyday communities are produced by service organisations and experienced by their patrons. We approach the social needs of older adults through the lens of 'community,' both as a concept and as a lived experience. Our attention to communities of peers and arenas for everyday interaction is discussed in the context of the dominant policy dis…
Relationship-Based Care Work, Austerity and Aged Care
Home care and aged care in English-speaking countries around the globe have enthusiastically taken up a model of work known as 'relationship-based care' (RBC). Part of the popularity of RBC is because it does not challenge austerity, underfunding, and extensive managerialism. Instead it works within and through them to foster caring connections between patients, staff, and families, and is able to do so because workers are willing to self-sacrifi…
Regulating for gender-equitable decent work in social and community services: Bringing the state back in
This article explores the potential of regulatory and policy reform for gender-equitable decent work in social and community services, a rapidly growing sector of female employment in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Along with other feminised sectors, employment in this sector is marked by low rates of unionisation, poor pay and fragmented, insecure working hours. Internationally, gig economy work is now app…
Migrant aged-care workers in Australia: Do they have poorer-quality jobs than their locally born counterparts
Migrants make up a significant and growing proportion of the aged-care workforce in Australia. Using data from the 2016 National Aged Care Workforce Census and Survey, we investigate employment conditions for Australian-born and overseas-born frontline workers working in residential and home-based aged care, focusing on two key poor job quality indicators. We find that migrant home care workers from non-English-speaking background (NESB) countrie…
Redressing gendered undervaluation in New Zealand aged care: Institutions, activism and coalitions
This article explores the apparent conundrum of how, with minimal employment standards and limited equal pay laws, New Zealand managed to significantly redress the gendered undervaluation of low-paid aged care work. To draw out the pathways to these reforms, we focus on the long-term strategic coalitions that underpinned them. We examine, in particular, the activism of a diverse range of policy actors – unions, employers, industrial and human rig…
Migration Pathways for Frontline Care Workers in Australia and New Zealand: Front Doors, Side Doors, Back Doors and Trapdoors
This article examines the use of migration law and policy to address the labour needs of the care sector in two jurisdictions. New Zealand uses an Essential Skills visa to allow the direct entry of care workers on a temporary basis while Australia relies on a range of overseas born entrants including international students and working holiday makers, to meet labour supply challenges in the care sector and to supplement the local workforce, which …
Failing to live up to the promise: The Politics of Equal Pay in ‘New’ Workplace and Industrial Relations Institutions
Workplace and industrial relations regulations are key sites for policy intervention to address Australia's gender pay gap, which, at 15.3 per cent, is almost as large as it was in 1997. In both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) the goal of equal pay has a more central place than it did in predecessor legislation. In particular, the Fair Work Act has the potential to deliver more gender-equitable wage s…
Social care and migration policy in Australia: Emerging intersections
Migrants are important both as providers and users of paid care services in Australia, yet migration has rarely featured in Australian strategies to grow and sustain the paid care workforce. Correspondingly, Australia is rarely mentioned in the international scholarship on care and migration that has burgeoned since the 1990s. This article shows the ways that service providers, consumer advocates, unions and scholars have begun to bring migration…
Multilevel Work-Family Interventions: Creating Good-Quality Employment Over the Life Course
Poor-quality jobs have significant costs for individual workers, their families, and the wider community. Drawing mainly on the Australian case, the authors' focus is on the structural challenges to work-life reconciliation and the multiple-level interventions necessary to create quality employment that supports workers to reconcile work and family over the life course. The authors argue that interventions are necessary in three domains: at the m…
Health or harm? A cohort study of the importance of job quality in extended workforce participation by older adults
Extended working lives mean that people will be 'exposed' to work for longer, and this exposure will occur at a life stage characterised by declining health for many. Our findings show that ensuring older workers have access to secure jobs which allow for control over work time, skill use and fair rewards will be essential if policy goals to boost participation and productivity, as well as reduce the health and care costs of the elderly, are to b…
Workplace sexual harassment at the margins
Men are overwhelmingly responsible for sexual harassment against women in the workplace. However, the literature also points to less typical manifestations, including sexual harassment by men of other men and by women of men or other women. This article examines these atypical forms of sexual harassment, drawing on a census of all formal sexual harassment complaints lodged with Australian equal opportunity commissions over a six-month period. The…
Australia's gender pay equity legislation: How new, how different, what prospects?
Australia’s equal pay laws have recently been renovated through the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 and the Fair Work Act 2009. In light of these changes, it is timely to ask how effective Australia’s legislative approach is likely to be for progressing pay equity. This article presents an analysis of Australia’s current equal pay provisions, assessing their potential on the basis of their operation to date and through recent experience in Can…
Understanding the negotiation of paid and unpaid care work in community services in cross-national perspective: The contribution of a rapid ethnographic approach
In the community services sector government policies and practices around the tendering and contracting out of services have a direct impact not only on the wages and conditions of care workers, but also on these workers' capacity to combine paid care work and unpaid care. The paper reflects on the qualitative methods employed in a large cross-national comparative study of community sector agencies, which contribute to a rich and gendered underst…
If I Had a Family, There Is No Way That I Could Afford to Work Here’: Juggling Paid and Unpaid Care Work in Social Services
Drawing on three case studies in each of Australia, New Zealand and Scotland, this article explores how care workers employed in the social services sector negotiate their unpaid care responsibilities in the context of lean work organization and low pay. For younger workers, the unrelenting demands of service provision and low pay made any long-term commitment to working in social services unrealistic, while many female workers experienced signif…
Lean social care and worker identity: The role of outcomes, supervision and mission
Since the 1980s, many social care jobs have shifted from the public to the nonprofit sector, accompanied by funding cuts, government contracts, managerialism and performance management. Qualitative data collected in Australia, New Zealand and Canada show that agency mission and immediate supervisors remain centrally important to workers’ identity and willingness to remain employed in social care. With the exception of one study site (where target…
Government Funding, Employment Conditions, and Work Organization in Non‐profit Community Services: A Comparative Study
The article provides a comparative exploration of New Public Management ( NPM ) funding models on the non‐profit sectors in the UK and Australia, and the implications for services, employment conditions, and worker commitment. A degree of convergence exists around the principles of NPM in the two case studies, creating employment regimes of low pay, casualization, and work intensification. Enhanced vulnerability to pay cuts in the UK , and insecu…
Intersections of regulation, space and gender: Retail banking in an Australian Regional Town
This paper analyses the intersections of employment regulation, gender and space in the working lives of employees in three banks in an Australian Regional Town, contributing to a socio-spatial analysis of the impact of different levels of regulation. Illustrating our analysis through a dispute around Saturday working at one of these banks, we argue that 'place' and 'space', in the location and organisation of these banking worksites and in the s…
Sexual Harassment and Conciliation: Which Complaints Settle, and Which Don't
A number of high profile sexual harassment claims have been reported recently in the Australian media. These include Kristy Fraser-Kirk's claims against David Jones (2010), Bridgette Styles' claim against Clayton Utz (2011) and James Ashby's claim against the (now former) federal Speaker in the House of Representatives (2012). Sensationalised media reports can shape community views about the frequency with which those who experience sexual harass…
Work‐family and work‐life pressures in Australia: Advancing gender equality in “good times”
Purpose This paper aims to explore recent changes in Australia's work‐family policies and programs and their implications for gender (in)equality. Design/methodology/approach The authors critically assess a suite of new work/family‐related policies, including the introduction of a government‐funded national paid parental leave scheme, a limited right to request flexible working conditions, and the extension of state and federal anti‐discriminatio…
Gender Equality and Decent Work in Australia
In 1998 the International Labour Organization (ILO) advanced the notion of 'decent work' as a way to enhance opportunities for women and men to obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity. This concept is now both salient and contested in national and international policy debates. In a 2008-09 campaign, the ILO asserted that 'gender equality [is] at the heart of decent work'. This article examines appeals…
Framing sexual harassment through media representations
Relationship-Based Care Work, Austerity and Aged Care
Home care and aged care in English-speaking countries around the globe have enthusiastically taken up a model of work known as 'relationship-based care' (RBC). Part of the popularity of RBC is because it does not challenge austerity, underfunding, and extensive managerialism. Instead it works within and through them to foster caring connections between patients, staff, and families, and is able to do so because workers are willing to self-sacrifi…
Work‐family and work‐life pressures in Australia: Advancing gender equality in “good times”
Purpose This paper aims to explore recent changes in Australia's work‐family policies and programs and their implications for gender (in)equality. Design/methodology/approach The authors critically assess a suite of new work/family‐related policies, including the introduction of a government‐funded national paid parental leave scheme, a limited right to request flexible working conditions, and the extension of state and federal anti‐discriminatio…
Self-monitoring, self-blaming, self-sacrificing workers: Gendered managerialism in the non-profit sector
If I Had a Family, There Is No Way That I Could Afford to Work Here’: Juggling Paid and Unpaid Care Work in Social Services
Drawing on three case studies in each of Australia, New Zealand and Scotland, this article explores how care workers employed in the social services sector negotiate their unpaid care responsibilities in the context of lean work organization and low pay. For younger workers, the unrelenting demands of service provision and low pay made any long-term commitment to working in social services unrealistic, while many female workers experienced signif…
Government Funding, Employment Conditions, and Work Organization in Non‐profit Community Services: A Comparative Study
The article provides a comparative exploration of New Public Management ( NPM ) funding models on the non‐profit sectors in the UK and Australia, and the implications for services, employment conditions, and worker commitment. A degree of convergence exists around the principles of NPM in the two case studies, creating employment regimes of low pay, casualization, and work intensification. Enhanced vulnerability to pay cuts in the UK , and insecu…
Lean social care and worker identity: The role of outcomes, supervision and mission
Since the 1980s, many social care jobs have shifted from the public to the nonprofit sector, accompanied by funding cuts, government contracts, managerialism and performance management. Qualitative data collected in Australia, New Zealand and Canada show that agency mission and immediate supervisors remain centrally important to workers’ identity and willingness to remain employed in social care. With the exception of one study site (where target…
Multilevel Work-Family Interventions: Creating Good-Quality Employment Over the Life Course
Poor-quality jobs have significant costs for individual workers, their families, and the wider community. Drawing mainly on the Australian case, the authors' focus is on the structural challenges to work-life reconciliation and the multiple-level interventions necessary to create quality employment that supports workers to reconcile work and family over the life course. The authors argue that interventions are necessary in three domains: at the m…
Workplace sexual harassment at the margins
Men are overwhelmingly responsible for sexual harassment against women in the workplace. However, the literature also points to less typical manifestations, including sexual harassment by men of other men and by women of men or other women. This article examines these atypical forms of sexual harassment, drawing on a census of all formal sexual harassment complaints lodged with Australian equal opportunity commissions over a six-month period. The…
Social care and migration policy in Australia: Emerging intersections
Migrants are important both as providers and users of paid care services in Australia, yet migration has rarely featured in Australian strategies to grow and sustain the paid care workforce. Correspondingly, Australia is rarely mentioned in the international scholarship on care and migration that has burgeoned since the 1990s. This article shows the ways that service providers, consumer advocates, unions and scholars have begun to bring migration…
Intersections of regulation, space and gender: Retail banking in an Australian Regional Town
This paper analyses the intersections of employment regulation, gender and space in the working lives of employees in three banks in an Australian Regional Town, contributing to a socio-spatial analysis of the impact of different levels of regulation. Illustrating our analysis through a dispute around Saturday working at one of these banks, we argue that 'place' and 'space', in the location and organisation of these banking worksites and in the s…
Below the “tip of the iceberg”: Extra-legal responses to workplace sexual harassment
Migrant aged-care workers in Australia: Do they have poorer-quality jobs than their locally born counterparts
Migrants make up a significant and growing proportion of the aged-care workforce in Australia. Using data from the 2016 National Aged Care Workforce Census and Survey, we investigate employment conditions for Australian-born and overseas-born frontline workers working in residential and home-based aged care, focusing on two key poor job quality indicators. We find that migrant home care workers from non-English-speaking background (NESB) countrie…
Migration Pathways for Frontline Care Workers in Australia and New Zealand: Front Doors, Side Doors, Back Doors and Trapdoors
This article examines the use of migration law and policy to address the labour needs of the care sector in two jurisdictions. New Zealand uses an Essential Skills visa to allow the direct entry of care workers on a temporary basis while Australia relies on a range of overseas born entrants including international students and working holiday makers, to meet labour supply challenges in the care sector and to supplement the local workforce, which …
The Production of Employment Conditions for Migrant Care Workers: Cross National Perspectives
There is widespread scholarly recognition that migrant long-term care (LTC) workers experience relatively poorer work conditions than local LTC workers. We focus here on the ways in which migration and employment regulation intersect in formal LTC markets to produce working conditions for migrant workers. Drawing on cross-national comparisons between Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom we explore: firstly, the forms of employment re…
Failing to live up to the promise: The Politics of Equal Pay in ‘New’ Workplace and Industrial Relations Institutions
Workplace and industrial relations regulations are key sites for policy intervention to address Australia's gender pay gap, which, at 15.3 per cent, is almost as large as it was in 1997. In both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) the goal of equal pay has a more central place than it did in predecessor legislation. In particular, the Fair Work Act has the potential to deliver more gender-equitable wage s…
Understanding the negotiation of paid and unpaid care work in community services in cross-national perspective: The contribution of a rapid ethnographic approach
In the community services sector government policies and practices around the tendering and contracting out of services have a direct impact not only on the wages and conditions of care workers, but also on these workers' capacity to combine paid care work and unpaid care. The paper reflects on the qualitative methods employed in a large cross-national comparative study of community sector agencies, which contribute to a rich and gendered underst…
Part-time of what? Job quality and part-time employment in the legal profession in Australia
This article examines the quality of part-time employment for solicitors in private practice in Australia. Although full-time jobs based on long hours are dominant in the legal profession, part-time jobs, primarily taken by women, have attracted attention in recent years. The article seeks to answer fundamental questions about the extent and quality of these jobs, and how well they serve the needs of the increasingly diverse workforce. The articl…
Ageing in Space: Remaking Community for Older Adults
In this paper, we explore the needs of older adults for social interaction by investigating how local and everyday communities are produced by service organisations and experienced by their patrons. We approach the social needs of older adults through the lens of 'community,' both as a concept and as a lived experience. Our attention to communities of peers and arenas for everyday interaction is discussed in the context of the dominant policy dis…
Gender Equality and Decent Work in Australia
In 1998 the International Labour Organization (ILO) advanced the notion of 'decent work' as a way to enhance opportunities for women and men to obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity. This concept is now both salient and contested in national and international policy debates. In a 2008-09 campaign, the ILO asserted that 'gender equality [is] at the heart of decent work'. This article examines appeals…
Naming and claiming workplace sexual harassment in Australia
The persistence of sexual harassment in the workplace and the fact such behaviour remains significantly unreported suggest that legal definitions of sexual harassment may not be well understood. In this paper we explore the naming and claiming of sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, drawing on a unique dataset from a national sexual harassment prevalence survey. We compare a group of individuals who stated they had been sexually harassed a…
Getting gender on the agenda: The tale of two organisations
Purpose This paper aims to explore emerging issues in the application of the “dual agenda” model of gender equitable organisational change aimed at improved work life outcomes in two large Australian organisations. Design/methodology/approach The research project used the collaborative interactive action research (CIAR) methodology that underpins the dual agenda change approach. Within both organisations, a multi‐method approach was used, includi…
Integrating part‐time work in policing services: Policy, practice, and potential
This paper draws on research examining the constraints on and opportunities for 'quality' part-time work in Victoria Police. While focus has been on increasing the quantity of part-time work to retain female police officers, the paper identifies the persistence of several cultural and institutional barriers to more integrated part-time work. It also highlights a number of positive practices in the deployment of both full-time and part-time member…
Below the “tip of the iceberg”: Extra-legal responses to workplace sexual harassment
Naming and claiming workplace sexual harassment in Australia
The persistence of sexual harassment in the workplace and the fact such behaviour remains significantly unreported suggest that legal definitions of sexual harassment may not be well understood. In this paper we explore the naming and claiming of sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, drawing on a unique dataset from a national sexual harassment prevalence survey. We compare a group of individuals who stated they had been sexually harassed a…
Policing, gender, and working time: An Australian case study
Part‐time work has been identified as a key mechanism to retain women in policing. However, its uptake remains low and part‐time police officers are often marginalised. The paper draws on collaborative research with Victoria Police and a discrimination complaint pursued by a Victoria Police detective who wanted to work part‐time. While she was ultimately successful, her case and the organisational case study highlight the complexity of the resist…
Self-monitoring, self-blaming, self-sacrificing workers: Gendered managerialism in the non-profit sector
Framing sexual harassment through media representations
Part-time of what? Job quality and part-time employment in the legal profession in Australia
This article examines the quality of part-time employment for solicitors in private practice in Australia. Although full-time jobs based on long hours are dominant in the legal profession, part-time jobs, primarily taken by women, have attracted attention in recent years. The article seeks to answer fundamental questions about the extent and quality of these jobs, and how well they serve the needs of the increasingly diverse workforce. The articl…
Sexual Harassment and Conciliation: Which Complaints Settle, and Which Don't
A number of high profile sexual harassment claims have been reported recently in the Australian media. These include Kristy Fraser-Kirk's claims against David Jones (2010), Bridgette Styles' claim against Clayton Utz (2011) and James Ashby's claim against the (now former) federal Speaker in the House of Representatives (2012). Sensationalised media reports can shape community views about the frequency with which those who experience sexual harass…
Work‐family and work‐life pressures in Australia: Advancing gender equality in “good times”
Purpose This paper aims to explore recent changes in Australia's work‐family policies and programs and their implications for gender (in)equality. Design/methodology/approach The authors critically assess a suite of new work/family‐related policies, including the introduction of a government‐funded national paid parental leave scheme, a limited right to request flexible working conditions, and the extension of state and federal anti‐discriminatio…
Gender Equality and Decent Work in Australia
In 1998 the International Labour Organization (ILO) advanced the notion of 'decent work' as a way to enhance opportunities for women and men to obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity. This concept is now both salient and contested in national and international policy debates. In a 2008-09 campaign, the ILO asserted that 'gender equality [is] at the heart of decent work'. This article examines appeals…
Lean social care and worker identity: The role of outcomes, supervision and mission
Since the 1980s, many social care jobs have shifted from the public to the nonprofit sector, accompanied by funding cuts, government contracts, managerialism and performance management. Qualitative data collected in Australia, New Zealand and Canada show that agency mission and immediate supervisors remain centrally important to workers’ identity and willingness to remain employed in social care. With the exception of one study site (where target…
Government Funding, Employment Conditions, and Work Organization in Non‐profit Community Services: A Comparative Study
The article provides a comparative exploration of New Public Management ( NPM ) funding models on the non‐profit sectors in the UK and Australia, and the implications for services, employment conditions, and worker commitment. A degree of convergence exists around the principles of NPM in the two case studies, creating employment regimes of low pay, casualization, and work intensification. Enhanced vulnerability to pay cuts in the UK , and insecu…
Intersections of regulation, space and gender: Retail banking in an Australian Regional Town
This paper analyses the intersections of employment regulation, gender and space in the working lives of employees in three banks in an Australian Regional Town, contributing to a socio-spatial analysis of the impact of different levels of regulation. Illustrating our analysis through a dispute around Saturday working at one of these banks, we argue that 'place' and 'space', in the location and organisation of these banking worksites and in the s…
Australia's gender pay equity legislation: How new, how different, what prospects?
Australia’s equal pay laws have recently been renovated through the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 and the Fair Work Act 2009. In light of these changes, it is timely to ask how effective Australia’s legislative approach is likely to be for progressing pay equity. This article presents an analysis of Australia’s current equal pay provisions, assessing their potential on the basis of their operation to date and through recent experience in Can…
Understanding the negotiation of paid and unpaid care work in community services in cross-national perspective: The contribution of a rapid ethnographic approach
In the community services sector government policies and practices around the tendering and contracting out of services have a direct impact not only on the wages and conditions of care workers, but also on these workers' capacity to combine paid care work and unpaid care. The paper reflects on the qualitative methods employed in a large cross-national comparative study of community sector agencies, which contribute to a rich and gendered underst…
If I Had a Family, There Is No Way That I Could Afford to Work Here’: Juggling Paid and Unpaid Care Work in Social Services
Drawing on three case studies in each of Australia, New Zealand and Scotland, this article explores how care workers employed in the social services sector negotiate their unpaid care responsibilities in the context of lean work organization and low pay. For younger workers, the unrelenting demands of service provision and low pay made any long-term commitment to working in social services unrealistic, while many female workers experienced signif…
Health or harm? A cohort study of the importance of job quality in extended workforce participation by older adults
Extended working lives mean that people will be 'exposed' to work for longer, and this exposure will occur at a life stage characterised by declining health for many. Our findings show that ensuring older workers have access to secure jobs which allow for control over work time, skill use and fair rewards will be essential if policy goals to boost participation and productivity, as well as reduce the health and care costs of the elderly, are to b…
Workplace sexual harassment at the margins
Men are overwhelmingly responsible for sexual harassment against women in the workplace. However, the literature also points to less typical manifestations, including sexual harassment by men of other men and by women of men or other women. This article examines these atypical forms of sexual harassment, drawing on a census of all formal sexual harassment complaints lodged with Australian equal opportunity commissions over a six-month period. The…
Social care and migration policy in Australia: Emerging intersections
Migrants are important both as providers and users of paid care services in Australia, yet migration has rarely featured in Australian strategies to grow and sustain the paid care workforce. Correspondingly, Australia is rarely mentioned in the international scholarship on care and migration that has burgeoned since the 1990s. This article shows the ways that service providers, consumer advocates, unions and scholars have begun to bring migration…
Multilevel Work-Family Interventions: Creating Good-Quality Employment Over the Life Course
Poor-quality jobs have significant costs for individual workers, their families, and the wider community. Drawing mainly on the Australian case, the authors' focus is on the structural challenges to work-life reconciliation and the multiple-level interventions necessary to create quality employment that supports workers to reconcile work and family over the life course. The authors argue that interventions are necessary in three domains: at the m…
Failing to live up to the promise: The Politics of Equal Pay in ‘New’ Workplace and Industrial Relations Institutions
Workplace and industrial relations regulations are key sites for policy intervention to address Australia's gender pay gap, which, at 15.3 per cent, is almost as large as it was in 1997. In both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) the goal of equal pay has a more central place than it did in predecessor legislation. In particular, the Fair Work Act has the potential to deliver more gender-equitable wage s…
Migration Pathways for Frontline Care Workers in Australia and New Zealand: Front Doors, Side Doors, Back Doors and Trapdoors
This article examines the use of migration law and policy to address the labour needs of the care sector in two jurisdictions. New Zealand uses an Essential Skills visa to allow the direct entry of care workers on a temporary basis while Australia relies on a range of overseas born entrants including international students and working holiday makers, to meet labour supply challenges in the care sector and to supplement the local workforce, which …
Redressing gendered undervaluation in New Zealand aged care: Institutions, activism and coalitions
This article explores the apparent conundrum of how, with minimal employment standards and limited equal pay laws, New Zealand managed to significantly redress the gendered undervaluation of low-paid aged care work. To draw out the pathways to these reforms, we focus on the long-term strategic coalitions that underpinned them. We examine, in particular, the activism of a diverse range of policy actors – unions, employers, industrial and human rig…
Regulating for gender-equitable decent work in social and community services: Bringing the state back in
This article explores the potential of regulatory and policy reform for gender-equitable decent work in social and community services, a rapidly growing sector of female employment in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Along with other feminised sectors, employment in this sector is marked by low rates of unionisation, poor pay and fragmented, insecure working hours. Internationally, gig economy work is now app…
Political science (26 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Law (18 works) · Economics (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Business (14 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (14 works) · Public relations (14 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (12 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (12 works)