Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999
The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act aims to improve the participation of women vertically (at all levels) and horizontally (across occupations) in the workforce. Australia has one of the highest levels of occupational segregation by gender of all OECD countries. This means that men and women in the workforce are not evenly distributed across all occupations. Rather, women tend to be concentrated in a small group of occupational areas. In addition, even in those occupations where they are a majority, women are not well represented in management positions.
The principal objects of the Act are:
- to promote the principle that employment for women should be dealt with on the basis of merit; and
- to promote, amongst employers, the elimination of discrimination against, and the provision of equal opportunity for, women in relation to employment matters; and
- to foster workplace consultation between employers and employees on issues concerning equal opportunity for women in relation to employment.
The Act requires higher education institutions and non-public sector organisations that employ a workforce of 100 or more to develop equal opportunity for women in the workplace programs. Employers are required to submit annual progress reports on their equal opportunity workplace programs to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.
An equal opportunity workplace program includes measures taken to address structural barriers to women's employment and career mobility, consistent with the merit principle. In developing a workplace program, an employer must prepare a workplace profile and look at specified employment matters to identify the issues that need to be addressed in their workplace to achieve equal opportunity for women. The employment matters to be investigated include: recruitment and selection; promotion, transfer and termination; training and development; work organisation; conditions of service; and arrangements for dealing with sex-based harassment, pregnancy and breastfeeding. The workplace program must also provide for evaluation of the effectiveness of the actions intended to achieve equal opportunity for women in the employer's workplace.