School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemGendered Ageism in Australia: Changing Perceptions of Age Discrimination among Older Men and Women(WILEY, 2016-12)This paper investigates how age and gender interact to shape older jobseekers’ experiences of age discrimination within a mixed methods framework. The analysis reveals that there has been a considerable decline in national levels of perceived ageism generally among older men relative to older women. These research findings suggest that the nature of ageism experienced by older women is qualitatively different from men. Currently, one‐size‐fits‐all, business case approaches rely on an overly narrow concept that obscures the gender and occupational dimensions of ageism. Hence, policy responses to ageism need to be far more tailored in their approach.
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ItemWhen design meets power: Design thinking, public sector innovation and the politics of policymaking(Policy Press, 2019)Responding to the need for innovation, governments have begun experimenting with ‘design thinking’ approaches to reframe policy issues and generate and test new policy solutions. This paper examines what is new about design thinking and compares this to rational and participatory approaches to policymaking, highlighting the difference between their logics, foundations and the basis on which they ‘speak truth to power’. It then examines the impact of design thinking on policymaking in practice, using the example of public sector innovation (PSI) labs. The paper concludes that design thinking, when it comes in contact with power and politics, faces significant challenges, but that there are opportunities for design thinking and policymaking to work better together.
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ItemIntroduction: Rethinking welfare-to-work for the long-term unemployed(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2019)Welfare reforms across OECD countries have seen social citizenship rights contractualisedandincreasinglyrepurposedascommodifying ‘tool[s]ofgovernance’ (Patrick,2017: 293) designed to reconfigure people from ‘passive’ benefit recipients into ‘active’ labour market participants. But despite a significant expansion in the groups of citizens targeted for ‘activation’, countries have persistently struggled to support the labour market (re)integration of social groups at risk of long-term unemployment: variously referred to in the social policy literature as social security recipients who are ‘vulnerable’ (Andersen et al., 2017), ‘harder-to-help’ (Whitworth and Carter, 2014: 111), or have ‘multiple problems and needs’ (Dean, 2003). This themed section brings together contributions from a network of international scholars researching the frontline of welfare reform to examine the ways in which contemporary activation and employability policies impact, and are experienced by...
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ItemThe Category Game and its impact on Street-Level Bureaucrats and Jobseekers: An Australian Case Study(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2019)A key question concerning the marketisation of employment services is the interaction between performance management systems and frontline client-selection practices. While the internal sorting of clients for employability by agencies has received much attention, less is known about how performance management shapes official categorisation practices at the point of programme referral. Drawing on case studies of four Australian agencies, this study examines the ways in which frontline staff contest how jobseekers are officially classified by the benefit administration agency. With this assessment pivotal in determining payment levels and activity requirements, we find that reassessing jobseekers so they are moved to a more disadvantaged category, suspended, or removed from the system entirely have become major elements of casework. These category manoeuvres help to protect providers from adverse performance rankings. Yet, an additional consequence is that jobseekers are rendered fully or partially inactive, within the context of a system designed to activate.