This article examines whether Australia should introduce a gender quota on ASX 200 boards. Although existing institutional arrangements favour voluntary initiatives, Australia may be at a critical juncture where two factors — the public, pragmatic nature of the statutory regulation of corporations in Australia and the current salience of gender as a political issue —may favour the introduction of a quota. In particular, Australian policy-makers may be amenable to change by observing initiatives from other jurisdictions. It is argued that we should maintain a healthy scepticism about functionalist arguments such as the business case for women on boards. Rather, we should invoke enduring justifications such as equality, parity and democratic legitimacy to support a quota. The optimal design of an Australian gender board quota will be also be explored.
In order to effect changes to law school culture, it is critical that the central epistemological assumptions of legal education be challenged. Gender analysis is valuable for corporations lawyers because it provides a way to challenge the epistemology which is fundamental to corporate law scholarship. This article proposes to locate the participation of women in corporations law. In doing so, it suggests that the “knowledge” of corporations law which is taught in Australian law schools masks the experiences of women in this area. When one begins to explore the issue of gender and corporations law, one’s immediate impression is that women are invisible. The protagonists in both corporate activity and corporations law always seem to be men. Corporations law is based upon a philosophy of liberal autonomy which has as its basic premise the self-interested male. The law has sought to preserve the liberal philosophy in this area and has regulated behaviour only when individual self-interest has caused certain kinds of quantifiable harms. Implicit and explicit in the law of corporations are such values as competition, hierarchy aggression and strict classification of roles.
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