Designing robust and revisable policies for gender equality: lessons from the Australian construction industry

Abstract

The construction industry remains the most male dominated sector in Australia. Several decades of formal gender equality initiatives by government and business have failed to bring about any meaningful change to the hierarchical and numerical representation of women in the sector. Drawing on new institutionalism, particularly the concepts of ‘robustness’ and ‘revisability’, the nature and intent of formal policies and programs that impact on gender equality are analysed in two large Australian multinational construction firms. Through in-depth interviews with senior management and a document analysis of formal policies, it is concluded that gender equality initiatives and broader policies are primarily focused on increasing the numbers of women in construction rather than addressing gender practices and outcomes. These policies lack many of the qualities of robustness and revisability, which impacts on their capacity to genuinely challenge the gendered norms, practices and narratives of the sector.

Keywords:

• Equality
• gender
• new institutionalism
• policy
• rules

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants that took part in this research. This research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Linkage funding scheme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Larrikinism is an Australian term which refers to a ‘blokishness’ that is good natured and mischievous yet irreverent to authority (Bellanta, 2012, p. xviii).