Marginalized Youth, the ‘Modern’ Professional and the ‘Modern’ Workplace: A note on the Need for a Critical Approach to ‘Modernizing’ Strategies

This paper briefly examines plans to ‘transform’ social work services for socially marginalized children and young people in England. More specifically, it will focus on moves to privatize social work services for children and young people who are in public care, or ‘looked after’. In what follows, the focus will be on how the promotion of ‘social work practices’ (SWPs) – the name of these envisaged new structures – is discursively embedded in the idea the idea that ‘liberation’ and worker fulfillment can only be delivered within a privatized sphere. In this context, it will be maintained, the work of Boltanski and Chiapello may help to illuminate how the government and other primary definers are seeking to ‘win hearts and minds’ for further neoliberal ‘transformations’ within Children’s Services in England.

Equity management strategies in the Australian private sector

This paper outlines the methods and outcomes of a study into equity management strategies in Australian private sector organisations reporting to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency. Reports from 1976 organisations indicate eleven key factors characterising equity management in Australia. The study highlights differences within previously identified social structural policies, temperamental and opportunity policies and identifies a further policy type, categorised as “support policies”. Differences have also been identified in relation to distribution structures, suggesting that gender is not the sole consideration in determining equity management strategies. The principle of distribution also figures strongly in equity management implementation.