FBE Gender Lab: Progressing gender equity in the workplace

The problem

Despite progress, women still face significant barriers to advancement in the workplace, including but not limited to the gender pay gap, while carrying a greater than equal share of work at home, particularly in family life. Further research is needed to examine persistent factors that impede women’s advancement in the workplace.

Addressing the research gap

The FBE Gender Lab brings together research expertise of eight academics across three departments to study the factors that contribute to the gender gap in pay and advancement in the labour market.  It’s three central research themes are:

• Social norms and responsibilities outside of work
• Rules and organisational structures that contribute to the gender gap in advancement
• Gender differences in behaviour and in treatment in the workplace

As well as pioneering new, multidisciplinary, evidence-based insights to inform policy across Australia and globally, the Lab trains the next generation of researchers through researcher development including seed grants for PhD students and actively promoting the lab’s seminars, workshops and conferences to graduate researchers. The first two recipients of the seed grants are Xinran Hu (a final year PhD student) who is studying the role of kinship norms on decision-making within the household in Timor Leste, and Renee Zhou (a 2nd year PhD student) who is studying how the expansion of railways, which facilitates trade and urbanisation, empowered women in China.

The impact

To date the lab has generated a high output of research publications, grant applications and media engagement alongside a targeted approach to profile raising and community building within the research community, establishing itself as a purposeful research initiative committed to improving gender equity.

Grant success progressing the lab’s key research themes, including gender norms and their impact in the labour market and beyond included Victoria Baranov’s (with Pauline Grosjean, Ralph De Haas, and Ieta Matavelli) ARC DP2025 for “Masculinity Norms: Economic, Health, and Political Impacts Across the World”, Diana Contreras Suarez grant from ADBI for the exploratory phase of the project "The Role of Labor Market Information and Gender Norms in Shaping Post-Secondary Choices" and Michelle Escobar’s Early Career Research Grant for the project "The economic consequences of improving maternal sleep". Together, this research makes a meaningful contribution to our understanding of the impacts of gender, as it pertains to us both at work and at home, with potential to have a direct impact on both public policies and workplace culture.

Media engagement in 2024 expanded on existing discourse examining the impact and sometimes negative effects of gender norms both in the workplace and in society more broadly.  A research snapshot featuring Victoria’s Baranov’s research on masculinity norms along with a new digital presence for the FBE Gender Lab, launched in its first year. Further focus on the lab’s research was gained with Maria Recalde’s University of Melbourne Award for Research Excellence in Mid-Career Achievements.

Forthcoming publications include one on the #MeToo movement and masculinity norms, for the Journal of Finance and Annual Review of Economics respectively, which will build on the lab’s publication record to date.

Building a network

Building a community of scholars tacking existing norms and obstacles to advancement for women is a central objective of the FBE Gender Lab. In its first year, the lab has been expanding their research community, launching in November 2024 the FBE Gender Lab seminar series. Professor Cordelia Fine’s interdisciplinary seminar, ‘Evolved Gender Constructionists? Integrating evolutionary and social constructionist accounts of gender’ was delivered to an audience of 30 from across FBE and the Melbourne Business School. The lab’s Executive Committee expanded to include more staff, and the lab’s mailing list now reaches staff and PhD students from disciplines across FBE and MBS, informing them of the lab’s activities, events and opportunities for collaboration.

The lab has worked to establish an active presence through several events at the intersection of gender and the economy,  delivering, hosting and sponsoring sessions and workshops including keynotes at The Collaborative Practice Centre (Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences), the Gender Lab session at the Australasian Meeting of the Econometric Society, the Gender session at the Australian Development Economics Workshop and Finance Down Under among others. Establishing and maintaining a research profile at these key national and international conferences affirms the FBE Gender Lab's position at the forefront of gender equality research in Australia.

Department: Economics
Area: Gender equality, policy

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