Policy and organisational discourses: identities offered to women workers

The National Training Reform Agenda (NTRA) (1989-1996) was the first iteration of a series of reforms designed to make the Australian workforce more skilled, efficient and productive. This paper critically examines how women became “(un)known” in these policy texts in relation to work and training. It also examines contemporaneous practices in some workplaces that assigned certain work identities to women and examines how the women resisted or acquiesced to these assigned identities within the discursive field of the workplace. Comparisons of the positioning effects of policy and workplace practices are made and an argument is presented regarding the marginalisation of women within seemingly benign policy discourses and organisational practices.