Gender Equity Policy: New Zealand and Australia

Gender equity policy seeks to systematically address issues related to discrimination and inequalities based on sex. These are particularly important for both the wider society as well as the institutions, such as universities, operating within it. In New Zealand (NZ) and Australia, both former British colonies, higher education (HE) has developed in similar ways; both were originally modelled on the British system, though with increasing input from the United States. Australia has 38 publicly funded universities and NZ has 8.

Since the early 1990s, both Australia and NZ have had policies in place at the national level to address and remove sex discrimination, whilst also putting in place a range of initiatives at the institutional level to increase women’s representation in academia. For example, Universities Australia, ...