Recordings from the Gender and Sexuality at Work Conference now available

Accelerating Gender and Sexuality Inclusion at Work was the theme of this year's Gender and Sexuality at Work Conference, which brought together presenters from 12 Australian universities, 7 international universities, 7 government agencies and 15 private sector organisations (both for-profit and not-forprofit) on 15 February 2022. The conference attracted over 400 delegates from around the world in a great demonstration of research collaboration, and respectful and rigorous debate.The virtual conference was a partnership between GIWL, the University of Melbourne and Swinburne University of Technology.

Decades of research dedicated to understanding how gender, sexual orientation, and sexual characteristics intersect with our work lives have given us tools to address bias, discrimination and abuse, to create more respectful, safer and ultimately healthier workplaces for all, and to improve the balance between multiple life roles. Indeed, the topics, methodologies, and applications of research on gender, sexual orientation and sexual characteristics at work have become increasingly sophisticated. Yet, many challenges remain.

In academia, there is a stronger need for multidisciplinary and intersectional approaches. In the community, actors want to enhance their responsiveness and to have a strategic approach to gender, sexual orientation, and sexual characteristics at work. Across both sectors, more efforts are required to build bridges and guarantee that what we learn from each other is effectively translated into better theories, methods, and applications. The similarities and differences in work experiences between social categories based on gender identity (e.g., men, nonbinary, women, transgender), sexual orientation (e.g., asexual, bisexual, gay, heterosexual, lesbian, queer and/or questioning), and sexual characteristics (e.g., intersex) are important research topics that can help improve the lives of all people. In 2022, the theme of the conference is Accelerating Gender and Sexuality Inclusion at Work.

Our knowledge of what works to enhance workplace inclusion is becoming increasingly sophisticated. In this iteration of the conference, we want to continue to explore a wide range of research about gender and sexuality at work, while focusing on what the evidence tells us can be done to accelerate gender and sexuality inclusion at work and in organisations.

Conference organisers Dr. Victor Sojo (UoM), Dr. Melissa Wheeler (Swinburne), and Professor Michelle Ryan (ANU) said the event was a brilliant success and saw a large group of people from a variety of sectors unpack how gender and sexuality impact our work lives.

Dr. Sojo said, “We organised this conference to create a professional and respectful space to connect and exchange knowledge with the community about the complex and pressing issues surrounding gender and sexuality inclusion at work. The high conference attendance and level of engagement from the participants are indicators of the community’s thirst for knowledge about these topics and the calibre of the program we curated for them.”

The day included 12 academic presentations, 12 government/community/industry-led workshops, and a plenary panel discussion with academics, legal and policy experts of the highest calibre. Wurundjeri Elder Tony Garvey embraced conference delegates on Tuesday morning with a warm Welcome to Country, followed by a University of Melbourne welcome from Professor Paul Jensen, Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Business and Economics.

The proceedings of the 2022 Gender and Sexuality at Work Conference held in February 2022 are now available here and include the short papers presented at the conference.

Recordings for the conference sessions can be found here (just click on session titles to see details and videos. Otherwise, you can watch them all on this YouTube playlist).

The conference organisers are now editing a Special Issue for the Australian Journal of Management about “Accelerating Gender and Sexuality Inclusion in Organisations”. The deadline to submit your full paper is 31 May 2022. We are looking for standard academic papers and teaching case studies. Several papers are already under review. More information is available here.