Women,work and industrial relations in Australia in 2018

Abstract

This year's annual review of women, work and industrial relations marks an important milestone. Nearly 10 years have elapsed since the introduction of the Fair Work Act 2009, which enshrined important new rights for the progression of gender equality. It is also 10 years since the Journal of Industrial Relations commenced this annual review. In addition to focusing on developments affecting women and work in 2018, this review provides a broad summary of key events over the past decade. We explore trends in women's workforce participation, union membership, economic security and pay equity, as well as major changes pertaining to work–family policy settings, workplace sexual harassment, and family and domestic violence leave. We conclude that although policy and employment frameworks have created a foundation on which to build gender equality, policy development has been sporadic and the context for women in Australian workplaces remains far from equal.

Keywords

Family and domestic violence flexible work gender equality gender pay gap industrial relations paid parental leave sexual harassment women and work

Introduction

This year's annual review of women and work marks two important milestones. It is nearly 10 years since the enactment of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act), which enshrined important new rights for the progression of gender equality, and 10 years have also elapsed since the Journal of Industrial Relations commenced this annual review of women and work (Baird and Williamson, 2009). This year's overview takes a decadal perspective, examining the major developments affecting women and work and highlighting key issues that remain unresolved.

The past decade has seen significant regulations that recognise, at least in principle, unique aspects of facets of women's labour force participation and the persistence of wage inequality in Australia. For example, the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 (Cth) established the first national paid parental leave (PPL) scheme, providing new rights and protections for working parents, and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency Act 2012 (WGE Act) created more transparency in pay equity and gender diversity in corporate structures with mandatory reporting to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) by companies with 100 employees or more. The introduction of the FW Act also enshrined important new rights and entitlements, including the right to request flexible work arrangements, protection from unlawful sex discrimination, and equal remuneration for work of equal or comparable value.

However, despite their initial promise, many of these initiatives have not produced substantial improvements in the conditions experienced by working women, particularly in low-paid, insecure sectors of the labour market. Women remain disproportionately concentrated in part-time and casual employment, where wages and conditions have been eroded due to employer lobbying before the Fair Work Commission (FWC) and remain under threat. The gender wage gap remains stubbornly entrenched, and efforts to apply the equal remuneration provisions of the FW Act to remedy pay inequality have proven frustratingly elusive. While the PPL Act addressed a major policy gap, its use remains highly gendered and attention to men taking leave is minimal. The past year has seen increased focus on sexual harassment arising from the worldwide #MeToo movement, although legal protections for workers experiencing harassment remain limited. On the upside, family and domestic violence has finally achieved recognition as a workplace issue, with the passage in 2018 of new leave entitlements for employees experiencing family and domestic violence.

A wealth of scholarly literature has been produced over the past decade interrogating these pivotal issues (see, inter alia, Baird and O'Brien, 2015; Baird et al., 2014; Cooper and Baird, 2015; Macdonald and Charlesworth, 2013; McDonald et al., 2015). This burgeoning academic debate has spilled into the public realm, where media interest in gender equality issues has also flourished (Kaine and Boersma, 2018). One study of Australian attitudes toward gender equality found that 88% of respondents believed that inequality was still a problem in 2018, and 58% believed achieving gender equality was worthy of policy attention (Evans et al., 2018).

Nevertheless, as this review illustrates, women continue to face myriad constraints at work, at odds with policy and industrial mechanisms aimed at promoting equality. In the following sections we highlight major developments of the past decade, noting that the breadth and depth of this review is necessarily limited by space constraints. We begin by examining trends in women's workforce participation, union membership, economic security and pay equity, before moving to an examination of work–family settings and major developments pertaining to sexual harassment and family and domestic violence leave.

Workforce participation

The increased participation of women in the paid workforce is one of the greatest transformations seen in industrialised economies in recent decades. Male and female labour force participation rates continued their trend toward convergence, with women's participation increasing from 58.8% in January 2009 to a near record of 60.4% in September 2018, and men's participation decreasing from 72.4% to 71% over the same period (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2018b). The upward trajectory in women's labour force participation may be explained by women's gains in education attainment, greater access to childcare to support women's entry into paid work, and growth in traditionally feminised occupations. Concurrently, the reduction in men's participation is attributable to a greater propensity for men to engage in post-secondary education and slower growth in traditionally male-dominated occupations and sectors (Cassells et al., 2018). The proportion of men and women pursuing non-school qualifications increased steadily over the past decade, as the economy continued its move towards a service orientation. In 2018, 66.4% of men and 67.1% of women aged 20–64 had a post-secondary qualification, compared to 61% of men and 57.4% of women in 2008 (ABS, 2018a). However, entrenched differences can still be seen in the occupations and industries in which men and women work, as well as patterns of full- and part-time employment.

Part-time and casual employment

One prominent feature of women's workforce engagement has long been their disproportionate concentration in part-time and casual work. In September 2018, 46.3% of jobs held by women were part-time, largely unchanged from 45.7% in 2009 (ABS, 2018c). Although the proportion of men employed part-time increased somewhat during this period, women remained overrepresented in this form of work, accounting for 71.1% of part-time workers in January 2009 and 68.7% in September 2018 (ABS, 2018c). Although men's engagement in casual work increased over the decade to 2018 (Gilfillan, 2018), women constituted a majority of workers with no paid leave entitlements. In 2018, 27% of female employees aged 15 or older were casually employed, compared to 23% of men (ABS, 2018b).

Several important debates were conducted in the decade to 2018 regarding the wages and conditions accorded to part-time and casual employees, particularly those in low-paid sectors of the economy. Under the FWC's 4-yearly review of modern awards, from October 2018 casual employees were given the right to request a permanent full- or part-time position if they had worked a regular pattern of hours for at least 1 year (FWC, 2017b). In its ruling, the FWC rejected a union proposal for mandatory conversion of casual staff to permanent positions after 6 months’ regular employment, but accepted the assertion that unrestrained use of casual employment ‘may operate to undermine the fairness and relevance of the safety net’ (FWC, 2017b: 159). However, the FWC provided employers with broad grounds on which to refuse employee requests. Employers may deny a conversion request if such action would require a significant adjustment to the employee's working hours; if the casual employee's hours were set to be reduced or their position to cease to exist within the next 12 months; or for any other ‘reasonable’ grounds. The extent to which the new provisions will facilitate conversions for casual employees, thereby reducing the proportion of women in precarious employment, is yet to be determined.

With respect to part-time employees, the 4-yearly review saw a significant push by employer groups to weaken conditions for part-time employees in several female-dominated sectors, including hospitality, aged care and retail. Although the FWC rejected many of the proposed changes – which included reductions to minimum contract hours and the ability to alter employees' working hours on notice – the FWC indicated that it may reconsider these matters in the future (FWC, 2017b). Such changes would have a detrimental impact on women workers in these low-paid and increasingly insecure jobs.

Union participation and voice

The past decade has seen continuing declines in union membership, accompanied by a changing demographic of union members and leaders. The proportion of workers who were trade union members fell from 18.4% in 2011 to 14.5% in 2016 (ABS, 2016a). In 2011, the proportion of men and women who were trade union members was relatively equal, at 18.4% and 18.3% respectively. By 2016, women comprised 51% of union members in Australia, with 15.9% of women being members of a trade union compared to 13.3% of men (ABS, 2016a), reflecting the expansion of traditionally feminised industries and occupations and concurrent decline in those dominated by men. Recent years have also seen increasing female representation in senior union leadership, as illustrated by the election of Sally McManus and Michele O'Neil as secretary and president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 2017 and 2018, respectively. As Baird (2019) notes, these changes in the gender composition of union membership and leadership correspond to a relatively greater emphasis on industrial issues affecting women, such as pay equity, workplace flexibility and family and domestic violence.

Women's economic security

Gender pay gap

The gender pay gap (GPG) is a significant source of gender inequality and a major contributor to women's economic insecurity (Senate Economic References Committee, 2016). Over the past two decades the GPG in full-time average weekly earnings has oscillated between 14% and 19%. Recent years have seen the GPG hit a record high of 18.5% in November 2014, before falling to a 20-year low of 14.6% in May 2018 (WGEA, 2018b). During Question Time on 18 September 2018, Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed credit for closing the gap (House of Representatives, 2018), despite citing no specific policy addressing the GPG. Various scholars have observed that recent fluctuations were more likely attributable to economic conditions, with Australia's mining and construction-led expansion contributing to a relatively higher GPG in the early to mid-2000s, owing to higher salaries in these traditionally male-dominated industries, and subsequent cooling in the sector reducing the GPG (McCutcheon, 2018).

Minimum wage GPG and the undervaluation of feminised work

The standardised nature of modern award minimum wages should theoretically eliminate gender-based differences among the 24% of workers earning the applicable minimum wage (ABS, 2017a, cited by Broadway and Wilkins, 2017). However, there is significant variation in the wages and conditions set out in the 123 modern awards governing employees as of January 2019. Drawing on Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics Australia data from 2008 to 2014, Broadway and Wilkins (2017) found that award-reliant women earned approximately 10% less per hour than award-reliant men. Unlike the GPG in market wages, the minimum wage GPG could not be ascribed to employer discrimination or human capital variations between men and women owing to the uniform nature of wage setting in the system. Instead, GPGs were evident between the different awards, with substantial penalties incurred for employment in jobs and sectors traditionally occupied by women, particularly non-university-educated women, who comprise 82% of female minimum-wage employees. This disparity represents a significant penalty for the large proportion of women concentrated in these already poorly paid jobs. Various cases have been brought before the FWC to address the systematic undervaluation of feminised work, with mixed results.

Equal remuneration cases

How to properly address the GPG and the undervaluation of traditionally feminised work has been recurrent issues facing industrial tribunals in the decade since the FW Act. In 2009, a Parliamentary inquiry examining pay equity argued that the FW Act be amended to adopt an unambiguous definition of equal remuneration for work of ‘equal or comparable value’, and a clear articulation that equal pay was an explicit objective of the Act (Parliament of Australia, 2009). It also called for equal valuation of skills in majority-female occupations and industries and the inclusion of an equal pay goal in modern awards, recognising the GPG as a problem that is structurally situated within industrial arrangements, including occupational gender segregation, the historical undervaluation of traditionally feminised work and women's relative lack of bargaining power due to their concentration in part-time work (for a complete discussion, see Macdonald and Charlesworth, 2013). The subsequent introduction of Part 2-7 of the FW Act gave the FWC discretionary power to make any order deemed appropriate to ensure that employees receive equal remuneration for work of equal or comparable value.

Considerable uncertainty remains, however, regarding the interpretation and application of these provisions, specifically with respect to the requirement of an opposite-gender comparator to prove the undervaluation of work. The first major test of the equal remuneration provisions came in 2012, when the Social and Community Services (SACS) case delivered wage increases to the predominantly female workforce in that sector. In its decision, Fair Work Australia relied on a construct of gender-based undervaluation as a means of determining whether the objective of equal remuneration for equal or comparable work was met and did not require the use of a male comparator (Smith and Stewart, 2014, 2017). Following the success of the SACS case, United Voice and the Australian Education Union (AEU) filed an application for an equal remuneration order in 2013, arguing that the wages paid to the majority female workforce in the early childhood education sector undervalued the skills, responsibilities and qualifications required to perform the work; the environment in which the work is performed; and the social and economic benefit of the work. Reversing the logic employed in the SACS case, the FWC issued a preliminary decision in 2015 rejecting the concept of gender-based undervaluation and stipulating that the applicants must reference a male comparator to demonstrate that early childhood educators are underpaid compared to other professionals with similar qualifications (FWC, 2015). Consequently, United Voice and the AEU altered their applications, relying on comparators in the Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award 2010.

In February 2018, the Full Bench dismissed the United Voice/AEU case, arguing that the comparator group relied upon by the unions – various groups of employees covered by the Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award 2010, and its predecessor awards in Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory – was imprecise and therefore invalid (FWC, 2018c). In both the 2015 and 2018 decisions, the tribunal argued that future applicants would be more likely to succeed in identifying suitable comparators when comparing small numbers of employees within industries, or with precisely defined capabilities, rather than relying on comparators that are ‘large, diverse, and involve significantly different work under a range of different conditions’ (FWC, 2015: 70, 2018c: 24).

Critics note that the FWC's insistence on a gender-based comparator within industries or occupational groups greatly narrows the basis on which equal remuneration claims can be heard, ‘effectively restricting the scope of applications to same or similar work, rather than work of equal or comparable value’ (Smith and Stewart, 2017: 134). The 2015 and 2018 decisions by the FWC in the United Voice/AEU case effectively amounted to a wholesale rejection of undervaluation as a supporting argument in equal remuneration cases, despite the advantages offered by the concept as a way to recognise the differences in women's labour market engagement ‘without the need to reconcile these differences to masculinised norms’ (Smith and Stewart, 2017: 134).

In July 2018, the Independent Education Union of Australia (IEUA) requested an adjournment of its equal remuneration case involving early childhood teachers while the Commission considered whether the minimum rates of pay applicable to early childhood teachers in the Educational Services (Teachers) Award 2010 were properly set, having regard to the value of the work performed by such teachers. Under the work value provisions of the FW Act, the FWC has the power to make a determination varying the minimum wages in a modern award for work value reasons, both on its own initiative and upon application. The FWC has argued that undervaluation could be used to support a work value application, but has also acknowledged that work value equivalence is a relative determination that involves a degree of subjectivity (Smith and Stewart, 2017). The FWC's decision, which was pending as of January 2019, will likely shed new light on the viability of work value applications as a way to establish undervaluation of traditionally feminised work. Nevertheless, the uncertainty surrounding undervaluation, and how to establish its validity in heavily feminised industries and occupations, will likely persist without regulatory changes. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has pledged to restructure the FWC and enshrine equal pay as a key objective of the FW Act if elected in 2019 (Karp, 2018).

Penalty rates

The erosion of penalty rates was another blow to women's economic security in 2018. Under the 4-yearly modern awards review, the FWC cut Sunday and holiday penalty rates in the female-dominated retail, hospitality, fast food and pharmacy sectors (FWC, 2017c), with the reductions coming into effect on 1 July 2018. Collectively, women account for 58% of employees in the retail sector and 52% of workers in the accommodation and food services sector (WGEA, 2017), sectors that suffer a ‘femaleness penalty’ in award wages, as identified by Broadway and Wilkins (2017). Women in these sectors are also substantially more likely than men to work part-time and rely on the premiums provided by penalty rates to supplement their earnings, which are well below men's average weekly earnings, both within the sector and across the economy (Daly, 2014). The ALP has made restoring penalty rates a key election pledge (Norman, 2017a). Various Parliamentary inquiries have also advocated for legislation to overturn the FWC's ruling (Senate Education and Employment References Committee, 2017), or at least to ensure that the FWC ‘cannot vary a modern award in a way that would, or would be likely to, reduce the take-home pay of any employee covered by the award’ (Parliament of Victoria, 2018: 39).

Work and family policy

Workplace flexibility

The decade to 2018 saw increased acceptance of flexible working arrangements, in principle if not always in practice. From 2010, the FW Act gave working parents of pre-schoolers or children under 18 with a disability the ‘right to request’ flexible work arrangements. In mid-2013, eligibility was extended to all parents or guardians of children school-aged or younger, carers, people with a disability, those aged 55 or older, people experiencing family or domestic violence, or people who provide care or support to someone affected by such violence. Although the right to request was a welcome development, researchers have noted that its lack of enforceability limits its effectiveness (Heron and Charlesworth, 2012).

Consequently, as part of the 4-yearly review, the ACTU sought an award variation to make flexibility requests an enforceable right. The ACTU claim sought to provide employees with a right to access family-friendly working hours (FFWH), and a right to revert to their former FFWH until their child was school-aged, or for a period of 2 years from the commencement of FFWH. The FWC rejected the claim in March 2018, arguing that it would effectively prevent employers from refusing requests. Instead, the FWC developed a new award clause, which extended provisions to workers covered by the National Employment Standards, including those with a disability, older workers and those affected by domestic violence (FWC, 2018b). The expanded eligibility did not include casual employees with 6 months' continuous employment, as first proposed by the ACTU, but instead maintained the 12-month threshold. Although the ACTU was unsuccessful in its bid to establish flexibility as an enforceable right, at least one business group noted that the FWC's decision clarified the process (Workplace Express, 2018).

Mandatory reporting data released by the WGEA shows some improvement in organisational promotion of flexible working, but employee access to such arrangements continues to be uneven. In 2017–2018, 70.7% of organisations had a policy and/or strategy to enable flexible working, compared to 57.5% in 2013–2014 (WGEA, 2018c), a promising increase. Nevertheless, only 48.7% of employees reported that their workplace flexibility needs were being met in 2017–2018 (WGEA, 2018b), suggesting that flexible work is still far from the ‘norm’ of organisational practice.

Research regarding the uptake of flexible work since the advent of the right to request reveals poor knowledge regarding employee rights and the enduring role of managerial discretion in setting employee access to flexible work. For example, Cooper and Baird (2015) showed that many employees and managers lack awareness of the organisational policies, enterprise agreements and legal rights pertaining to the right to request. Similarly, Skinner et al. (2016) found that 68.9% of workers, of whom 71.3% are workers with children under 16 years, were unaware of the right to request 26 months after its introduction. Moreover, the proportion of workers who formally requested flexible work remained largely unchanged at around 20% 5 years after the introduction of the FW Act. Skinner et al. found that most employees who made a formal request had it fully or partially granted. However, among the majority who made no such requests, lack of awareness around the provisions, concerns about workload expectations, unsupportive supervisors and negative workplace cultures were major impediments to employees exercising the right to request, suggesting that sustained effort is required to normalise flexibility in Australian workplaces.

Paid parental leave

The past decade has seen a significant transformation in the public policy debate around parental leave. Long regarded as the private concern of individuals, paid parental leave since has become ‘an embedded state social policy’ (Baird and O’Brien, 2015: 208), and is increasingly accepted as an important lever to encourage female workforce participation. The passage of the FW Act expanded parental leave entitlements to allow both men and women to access 52 weeks of unpaid leave. The subsequent introduction of Australia's national PPL scheme from 2011 provided eligible primary carers with 18 weeks’ leave at the national minimum wage (Department of Social Services (DSS), 2014), from which provisions were extended in 2013 to include 2 weeks’ Dad and Partner Pay (DSS, 2014).

The election of a Coalition government in 2013 reintroduced a period of policy uncertainty, including a conservative-led proposal to expand the programme to offer 6 months of PPL at an employee's usual salary, capped at $75,000, followed by a subsequent push to limit employee access to both the government's PPL and their employer-funded schemes, potentially disadvantaging thousands of women (Williamson, 2015). The government withdrew this policy in its 2017 budget, since which time debates about PPL have been largely absent from the national agenda (Norman, 2017b).

Although the PPL scheme was introduced as ‘parental’ leave, it was explicitly targeted at women as primary caregivers, who accounted for 99% of PPL recipients in the 2 years immediately after its introduction (DSS, 2014), and 95% of primary parental leave among non-public sector employees in 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 (ABS, 2018b). Trend data suggest, however, that the introduction of PPL has resulted in some improvements to workplace retention among women. From 2011 to 2017, the proportion of women who returned to the same job they were in prior to giving birth rose from 71% to 77%. Of those women, the proportion who returned to the same roles and undertook the same responsibilities rose from 59% to 65% (ABS, 2017b). The enactment of PPL has also enabled women to spend more time with their newborns. Of returning mothers, 43% reported their child was 7 months or older when they returned to work, compared to 35% in 2011 (ABS, 2017b).

Despite these improvements, access to employer-funded PPL has remained static. The proportion of private sector employers offering primary carer's leave was mostly unchanged, from 48.5% in 2013–2014 to 47.8% in 2017–2018. The circumstances for secondary carers improved slightly, with 41.8% of large private sector employers offering some form of secondary carer's leave in 2017–2018 compared to 38.8% 5 years earlier (WGEA, 2018c). Growth has also occurred in organisations reporting formal policies and/or strategies to support employees with family and caring responsibilities, up 2.3 percentage points over the past 5 years to 64.3% in 2017–2018 (WGEA, 2018c). However, only a fraction of organisations (1.6%) had established targets to encourage men to work flexibly in 2017–2018, (WGEA, 2018a) reflecting that the negotiation of work and care still overwhelmingly falls to women in Australian workplaces.

Sexual harassment

Research indicates that although public awareness of sexual harassment has increased, such behaviour remains rife in Australian institutions and formal complaints are still rare. National surveys of the incidence of workplace sexual harassment conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) show that the prevalence of sexual harassment increased dramatically in the decade to 2018, with the proportion of respondents who say they have experienced sexual harassment in the past 5 years increasing from 4% in 2008 to 33% in 2018 (AHRC, 2018a).

Research has shown that greater public awareness of sexual harassment can impact the reported incidence of harassing behaviour (Ilies et al., 2003). Indeed, various high-profile events in Australia may have contributed to increased public cognisance around the behaviours that constitute harassment. For example, a widely reported 2011 inquiry examined the treatment of women in the Australian Defence Forces (AHRC, 2012), and in 2017 the AHRC released the results of a nationwide survey demonstrating the high prevalence of sexual harassment and assault on Australia's university campuses (AHRC, 2017). The highly publicised allegations against American film producer Harvey Weinstein (Kantor and Twohey, 2017) also brought awareness of sexual harassment to the fore, invigorating the #MeToo movement, in which thousands of women used social media to share their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.

The accounts of harassment that emerged via #MeToo highlighted the destructive effects such behaviour can have on victims, and the reputational and financial costs incurred by businesses that fail to prevent such behaviour. Nevertheless, only 17% of respondents who said they had experienced sexual harassment lodged a complaint in 2018, virtually unchanged from 16% in 2008. Respondents avoided making complaints for fear of being perceived as over-reacting (49%) or because it was ‘easier to keep quiet’ (45%). Disturbingly, the proportion of respondents who said they experienced negative career consequences after making formal complaints increased from 22% in 2008 to 43% in 2018 (AHRC, 2018a). Several high-profile instances in 2018 highlighted the risks of reporting sexual harassment, when women who made confidential disclosures later found themselves thrust into the spotlight through media leaks and resultant defamation lawsuits (Patty, 2018). Concern about the career-limiting potential of making a sexual harassment claim continues to deter employees from filing such complaints (Baird et al., 2019).

Various scholars, organisations and employment lawyers have called for sexual harassment to be explicitly outlawed under industrial law (Kiejda, 2018). The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, launched a nationwide inquiry into workplace sexual harassment in June 2018, seeking to determine the economic impact of sexual harassment and the adequacy of existing legal frameworks (AHRC, 2018b). Sexual harassment is not explicitly forbidden under the FW Act, but is instead covered by the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), with complaints typically handled by the AHRC through a conciliation process that can last for months. Advocates argue that including sexual harassment as an ‘adverse action’ under the FW Act would allow an employee to seek a court injunction to prevent the harassment (Williams, 2018). The social and legal impacts of #MeToo are likely to reverberate into 2019 and beyond.

Family and domestic violence leave

Progress has been made to address family and domestic violence, a persistent problem in Australia that is disproportionately experienced by women. Approximately one in six women (17%) has experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner since the age of 15, compared to 6% of men (ABS, 2016b). The AHRC has estimated that 1.4 million Australian women live in an abusive relationship, or have done so in the past, of whom 800,000 are in the workforce (AHRC, 2015).

The first clauses in industrial instruments providing family and domestic violence leave (FDVL) appeared in 2010, as unions negotiated their inclusion into enterprise agreements; within 4 years, scores of clauses had been included in industrial instruments (Baird et al., 2014). By 2018, more than 1000 employers were providing paid leave and other entitlements to victims of family and domestic violence through enterprise agreements, suggesting momentum on this issue (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2018). In March 2018, the FWC determined that workers covered by modern awards should be entitled to 5 days’ unpaid FDVL per annum (FWC, 2018a), and in December, the government passed the Fair Work Amendment (Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2018, amending the National Employment Standards to include 5 days of unpaid FDVL within a 12-month period. These legislative developments followed an unsuccessful case brought before the FWC by the ACTU to include 10 days of paid FDVL in modern awards (FWC, 2017a), a move supported by the ALP. Business groups opposed the move, arguing that the provision of paid FDVL would open the floodgates to union claims for leave entitlements for myriad ‘social problems such as mental health issues, relationship breakdown, drug dependence, alcohol dependence and crime’ (Australian Industry Group, 2016: 8).

In its decision, the FWC expressed a preliminary view that employees should be able to access personal or carers' leave as FDVL, but deferred consideration of that matter until June 2021 (FWC, 2018a). The ALP has also pledged to legislate 10 days of paid FDVL for all workers if elected, following New Zealand, which became the first industrialised country to legislate paid FDVL leave of 10 days a year (New Zealand Parliament, 2018). Although, the past decade has seen family and domestic violence firmly established as a workplace issue, debate regarding the nature and extent of FDVL provisions continues.

Conclusion

This annual review, like reviews of women, work and industrial relations over the past decade, has focused on several key developments pertaining to women and work in Australia. Although the past decade has seen increased regulatory and public policy action to promote gender equality, such as in the introduction of paid parental leave and family and domestic violence leave, the situation for women remains far from equal. Examining the legislative, industrial and policy flux of the last decade, one thing is certain – workplace gender equality is an enduring issue, and one which will continue to occupy community and government attention.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, whose guidance was extremely helpful. Any errors remain our responsibility alone.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Biographical notes

Sue Williamson is a senior lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of NSW, Canberra. She specialises in two main areas of research – gender equality in the workplace, and public sector human resources and industrial relations. She is currently examining how public sector organisations can create and sustain gender equitable and inclusive cultures.

Meraiah Foley is a lecturer in Work and Organisational Studies and Work Integrated Learning at the University of Sydney Business School. Her research has investigated the role of managers in embedding gender equality in organisations, workplace flexibility and the reduction of bias in human resource management processes. Her current research examines how managers conceptualise the concept of merit in the context of diversity and inclusion.

Natalie Cartwright is a research associate at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra and has two decades' experience as a research and policy manager with a predominant focus on women's equality and economic security, across Commonwealth and state government agencies. Her current research areas focus on workplace gender equality and diversity, equity and inclusion across the public sector.

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