Melbourne Law School - Research Publications
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ItemMixed methods research(Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024-08)Mixed methods research designs meaningfully integrate both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand a research problem. Mixed methods research methodologies can be used to cast a nuanced light on complex legal problems, generating new answers which would not be perceived with one data source alone. However, mixed methods research appears rare in labour law research, perhaps reflecting gaps in legal data, the time and cost of undertaking such studies, and limited training in quantitative methods in some jurisdictions. This chapter identifies data sources that could enable a new generation of mixed methods labour law research.
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ItemA Life Course Approach to Addressing Exponential Inequalities: Age, Gender, and Covid-19(Oxford University PressOxford, 2023-01-19)This chapter argues that age is an exponential amplifier of inequality. It puts forward a life course perspective as a nuanced lens for enriching our understanding of discrimination and its impacts over time. A life course approach offers a targeted focus for addressing exponential inequalities, drawing our attention to discrimination at critical transition points. Building on this life course perspective, experiences of discrimination over time can be seen as non-linear and multi-directional, but still interlinked and biographic, punctuating and shaping life stories in unpredictable ways. These ideas are illustrated through a case study of gendered ageism at work, drawing on empirical evidence to map how gender inequality is amplified with age and time, and further exacerbated by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Viewed with this life course lens, this chapter argues that discrimination law appears fundamentally ill-adapted for responding to exponential inequalities. The chapter therefore considers the extent to which ‘next generation’ positive duties—like the Gender Equality Act 2020 (Vic)—might address these concerns.
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ItemWorking at the edges of legal protection: Equality law and youth work experience from a comparative perspective(Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2021)
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ItemPensions and the Modern Workforce(Hart Publishing, 2020)Old age pensions play a fundamental role in ensuring adequacy of income for the elderly into old age. While pensions fulfil a key social and economic role, there is increasing concern that pension systems in developed countries are not sustainable in the face of demographic ageing and following poor investment returns during the financial crisis. Drawing on trends in pension law and policy in the UK and Australia, this chapter commences with a discussion of how we might conceive of pensions from a theoretical perspective (part II), and considers the emerging challenges to established pension systems from the changing nature of work and social and demographic shifts (part III). The chapter argues that existing pension systems are not yet able to accommodate the changing nature of work, and puts forward normative criteria for evaluating and developing more appropriate pension systems for the modern workforce (part IV). It then maps emerging trends in pension reform (part V), and considers the tensions that are playing out in trying to navigate these normative criteria. Part VI concludes.