International Construction Law Review
WHY GENDER LAWS ARE FAILING IN CONSTRUCTION: LESSONS FROM VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA, AND INTERNATIONAL APPROACHES TO GENDER EQUALITY*
Rebecca Dickson1
PhD candidate, Monash University
ABSTRACT
The Australian state of Victoria’s regulatory framework comprises a duty to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate discrimination, a duty to take necessary and proportionate action towards achieving gender equality and obligations to achieve targets for women in construction. But women represent only 13 per cent of Victoria’s construction workforce. Using the idea that people (and culture) can shape the development of laws, this paper analyses why. It studies the interaction between these Victorian laws and the heavily masculinised culture of Victoria’s construction industry. The analysis reveals that Victoria’s laws are not designed to drive cultural change. Three reforms are proposed: legislating the achievement of targets for women in construction, introducing a multi-layered enforcement regime, and enabling judicial oversight.
1. INTRODUCTION
Australia’s construction culture has been described as “male-dominated”,2 “masculine”3 and “macho”.4 It is characterised by “expectations of presenteeism, total availability, … and very long work hours”,5 and it is
* The preparation of this article was aided with artificial intelligence. In particular, “Claude” (version Sonnet 4.6) was used to create Figure 1 (being a graph depicting the number of women and men working in the Victorian construction industry) and to calculate various percentage measures describing the workforce composition. The AI output was validated using Microsoft Excel. Claude was also used to make suggestions for academic tone and expression.
1 BA (Hons)/LLB (Hons), Monash University; PhD Student, Faculty of Law, Monash University (Australia) (email: rebecca.dickson1@monash.edu) and Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne (Australia). This paper was prepared for submission as part of a Doctor of Philosophy (Law) at Monash University. This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship and a Building 4.0 CRC top-up scholarship. This article has been peer-reviewed.
2 Ghanbaripour, A, Tumpa, R, Sunindijo, R, Zhang, W, Yousefian, P, Camozzi, R, Hon, C, Talebian, N, Liu, T and Hemmati, M, “Retention over Attraction: A Review of Women’s Experiences in the Australian Construction Industry; Challenges and Solutions”, (2023) Buildings vol 13 issue 490, 1, p 9 (hereinafter “Retention Over Attraction”).
3 Galea, N, Powell, A, Loosemore, M and Chappell, L, “The Gendered Dimensions of Informal Institutions in the Australian Construction Industry”, (2020) Gender, Work and Organisation vol 27 1214, p 1215 (hereinafter “Gendered Dimensions of Informal Institutions”).
4 Ghanbaripour and Others, “Retention Over Attraction”, above fn 2, p 14.
5 Galea and Others, “Gendered Dimensions of Informal Institutions”, above fn 3, p 1214.
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