Sue Richardson

Academic, economist and feminist

Richardson chose to be an academic because she admired scholarship and universities. There was also a reasonable chance that if the circumstances arose, she could combine it with marriage and motherhood, in contrast to most other professional jobs in the early 1970s. After receiving her PhD in 1976 from La Trobe University, Richardson moved to South Australia and worked in the Economics School at Adelaide University for almost 30 years. She was Reader from 1991.

In 1994, Richardson participated in a national workshop that examined the lack of women economists, a characteristic in the UK and US too. Her paper described the ‘androcentric’ culture, but she decided that "economics was too useful and too influential to be ignored by women or to be left predominantly for men to use for men’s purposes and in men’s ways".

Esteemed by her colleagues, Richardson has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences since 1994, including serving as its president from 2003 to 2006.

Richardson has published important social justice works, including Reshaping the Labour Market: Regulation, Efficiency and Equality in Australia (1999) and Living Decently: Material Well-being in Australia (1993). The latter work was co-written with Peter Travers, based on their quantitative measures of material wellbeing and poverty.

Richardson was convener of the University of Adelaide’s Academic Board, and a member of its Council and Finance Committee.

Flinders University

In 2000, Richardson was appointed professor and director at the National Institute of Labour Studies (NILS), Flinders University, and later principal research fellow. NILS was renowned for combining rigorous analysis with concern for the wellbeing of people as workers. Commissioned research, and scholarly articles and books, added to Richardson’s notable publications.

The investigation into the state of children’s wellbeing was published in No Time to Lose (2005) with Margot Prior and Children of the lucky country? How Australia has turned its back on children and why children matter (2005), with Fiona Stanley and Margot Prior.

Richardson has been a member of many advisory panels for the South Australian and Commonwealth governments. Significantly, she was a member of the Fair Work Commission for ten years, as an expert on the Minimum Wage Panel.

It published Richardson’s “Discussion paper: The UK evaluation of the impacts of increases in their minimum wage” as part of its annual minimum wage review in 2018.

Continuing research and awards

In 2012, Flinders University awarded her one of its inaugural Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professors.

Richardson is an Adjunct Professor at Adelaide University and emerita at Flinders University.

Since 2015, Richardson has been actively involved in protecting nature and the climate, both as a member of the Council of the Australian Conservation Foundation for nine years, and as a member of the Board of the Conservation Council of SA.

Richardson was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia "for service to the social sciences, particularly in the field of labour market economics as an academic and researcher, and through contributions to the development of socially inclusive public policy."

As an economist, Richardson has reflected, "it’s not entirely coincidental [that my]... research interests have not been in the hard core of neoclassical economics, but rather have explored the meaning and measurement of the standard of living, the functioning of labour markets and the circumstances of low wage workers, and inequality in the distribution of income."