Examining the gendered impact of economic restructuring on regional labour markets

This paper explores the gendered impact of structural change in regional labour markets, and the implications for gender equality. While buffering, segmentation and substitution labour market hypotheses have been used in national and supra-national analyses of labour market inequality, their application has not been tested at the regional level. Examining three regions within Australia (the Latrobe and Geelong regions of Victoria and North Western region of Tasmania) that have experienced distinctive patterns of economic restructuring since 1996 the paper finds that while women’s education and training has improved, the concentration of women in part-time work and female-dominated industries has resulted in limited change to their relative contribution to household income. The research suggests that the application of labour market hypotheses to regional labour markets provides an improved understanding of the impact of economic restructuring on gender equality.