Intersectional gender equality in the Australian workplace: The paradoxical effects of HR system

Help address gender inequality in the workplace

If you are passionate about building a career in the human resources industry and concerned about improving gender equality in the workplace, the University of South Australia – Australia’s University of Enterprise – is offering a hands-on project-based PhD within Centre for Workplace Excellence (CWEX), in partnership with Victoria Commission into Gender Equality in the Public Sector (CGEPS) and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

About this project

Intersectionality can shed light on how various attributes can compound discrimination. Understanding this is key to advancing gender equality because different barriers affect individuals uniquely. These barriers include racist attitudes, sexual harassment, and employment hurdles for culturally and racially marginalised (CARM) women in Australian workplaces. Despite progress, they still face unequal access to power and leadership roles.

Workplaces wield significant influence for change, impacting health, safety, economic equity, and culture. However, existing HR systems may impede rather than foster equality for CARM women. Well-developed systems can inadvertently perpetuate biases, hindering intersectional concerns and impeding CARM women's advancement into leadership roles.

Our project explores these paradoxical effects, seeking to understand the HR system characteristics that enable white vs. CARM women's success, particularly in leadership roles. We also want to understand if managers and practitioners recognise intersectional discrimination within these systems, or whether they are blinded.

We aim to develop a deeper understanding of how intersectionality influences discrimination, particularly for CARM women, and identify effective HR practices through analysing HR systems to distinguish practices that support or hinder gender equality.

We also want to raise awareness of unconscious biases by leaders and managers perpetuating inequality within organisations and develop an intersectional HR Toolkit with an intersectional gender lens for advancing gender equality.

You’ll be based within the dynamic CWEX, joining a collaborative, focused and highly supportive cohort of researchers. You will be exposed to a wealth of experience and mentorship and presented with a range of networking opportunities which will position you well upon graduation.

What you'll do

In this project-based research degree, you will be involved in a mixed-method approach across three phases. Phase one will involve analysing data from the CGEPS and WGEA reports (2022–2024) to identify HR system characteristics that support white vs. CARM women's leadership roles. In Phase two you will help conduct interviews to gauge managers’ and HR practitioners’ awareness of unconscious biases fuelled by meritorious HR systems.

For Phase three, you will explore a creative, practice-led research approach to help develop an HR package with an intersectional gender lens for organisational practices. This tool aims to empower organisations to advance intersectional gender equality in their workplaces.

We will encourage and help you to present your research findings to professionals in relevant sectors, which will help grow your professional networking and communication skills. There may also be an opportunity to create online resources such as webinars and podcasts, gain media exposure and develop practitioner articles for wider dissemination.

Where you'll be based

You’ll be based at CWeX. We make it our business to give organisations the knowledge to empower them to achieve excellence in organisational productivity and employee wellbeing.

Through our evidence-based research, we uncover invaluable insights and best practice on topics such as employee health, safety and wellbeing; workforce diversity and inclusion; bullying and harassment prevention; leadership, culture and performance; and human resource management systems, practices and structures to demonstrate how organisations can address the workplace challenges of today and into the future.

Our solutions-focused approach will help you to identify what really works in the workplace, where changes can be made, and how organisations can evolve to become front runners in the global marketplace.

We do the hard work through our multidisciplinary research to make sure that your workplace can function at its best, with guidance from the latest practices in workplace excellence.

Supervisory Team

Associate Professor Connie Zheng

Principal Supervisor

Professor Carol Kulik

Co-supervisor

Dr Xiao Lin

Co-supervisor