Repressive Equality Regimes: Theorizing the Disconnections in Organizational Equity Practices

Abstract

For decades Western organizations have been subject to equal opportunity and anti-discrimination laws, gender equality policies, and diversity and inclusion strategies. Still, this paper suggests that there has been little fundamental change to the structure of outcomes for the workforce labelled diverse. This paper draws on data from three Australian organizations with advanced gender diversity and inclusion (GDI) programs to explore why this is the case. Our research found: 1) dominant managerial GDI practices co-exist with multiple, unacknowledged, local discourses and competing interests; 2) managerial GDI practices operate in a system that segregates ‘diverse’ employees and the performance of ‘equity’ work; and 3) GDI strategies inadvertently legitimize dominant western forms of leadership associated with white masculinity. We explain our findings through the concept of ‘repressive equality regimes’: organizational diversity and inclusion practices and policies that confirm an organization’s positive engagement with equality but remain wedded to the structural conditions that perpetuate legitimize unequal social and organizational hierarchies.