Women, work and global supply chains: the gender-blind nature of Australia’s modern slavery regulatory regime

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2018, the Parliament of Australia enacted the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth), which—despite its misleading and expansive title—primarily requires medium- and large-scale businesses to undertake due diligence to identify the risks of exploitation in their supply chains. This article argues that, despite its attempt to enhance the accountability of businesses, the Act is “gender blind”, as it fails to acknowledge and address the divergent experiences of men and women with supply chains—either as workers or affected stakeholders. The shortcomings in the Act can be traced back to the limitations of the Inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, which called for submissions from interested stakeholders in the lead-up to the Act’s adoption. Although that inquiry received submissions from a broad cross-section of individuals and organisations, including civil society, it offered legislators few potential solutions for incorporating a gender perspective into the law. The lack of gender-responsive, good practice modern slavery laws in other jurisdictions further undermined the legislative drafting process. As a result, the Act largely disregards systemic gender inequality, and thereby fails to effectively prevent Australian companies from perpetuating or benefiting from it. At a minimum, the Act should have required companies to conduct gender-sensitive due diligence and collect gender-disaggregated data. If it had done so, the Act could have been regarded as a “gender-responsive” law that helps to address the gendered implications of global modern slavery.