Of girls and spanners: Feminist politics, women’s bodies and the male trades

In mid-2017, a federal Senate Committee inquiring into gender segregation in the Australian workforce tabled its final report, after nine months of deliberation.1 The committee was set up to investigate ongoing industrial and occupational gender segregation in Australia, its economic consequences for women and to recommend approaches for addressing it. The aims are wearingly familiar. How many such inquiries have been held at state and federal level, I wonder, following feminists’ renewed activism around women’s employment since the 1970s? How many individuals, organisations and agencies have undertaken research, collated data, compiled reports and volunteered their time to table submissions? How many research papers and reports languish in archives and desk drawers around the nation? What, indeed, will be the fate of this latest Senate Committee report?