Emeritus Professor Sara Charlesworth

Sara Charlesworth is Professor Emerita in the College of Business & Law.

She was previously Professor of Work, Gender & Regulation in the School of Management (2014-2022) and an RMIT Distinguished Professor (2019-2022). Sara is a socio-legal scholar whose research focuses on gender (in)equality in employment at the labour market, industry and organisational levels. She has held two Australian Research Council fellowships, including a Future Fellowship (2013-2018), and held several ARC projects including on sexual harassment, gender equality and decent work, quality part-time work, work/life balance and gender-equitable organisational change in male-dominated organisations.

Over recent years of Sara’s research has focused mainly on low-paid work in feminised industries and on paid care work. She has recently completed the ARC funded Discovery project ‘Decent Work & Good Care: International Approaches to Aged Care’. She is currently a chief investigator on a Canadian SHHRC partnership grant ‘Imagining Age–Friendly “Communities” within Communities: International Promising Practices’, for which she is hosting the Melbourne case study in April 2024.  

Sara has published and presented widely in a wide range of academic, policy and community fora and has been involved in a number of key gender equality policy reviews and debates. She continues to publish as highlighted below under publications. Most recently Sara has completed work for Public Services International producing a report on Decent Work and Quality Long-term Care with Profs Ian Cunningham (Strathclyde) and Tamara Daly (York) and a Literature Review on Work and Care with Prof Meg Smith (Western Sydney) for the Fair Work Commission’s Modern Awards Review 2023-2024.

Sara is deeply committed to collaborative practice and knowledge exchange. Sara was invited to the 2022 Jobs and Skills Summit and presented on collective bargaining for low paid workers and on policy levers to progress gender equality. She has been an advisor to the Australian Human Rights Commission on their 2012, 2018 and 2022 National Sexual Harassment Prevalence Surveys. Sara was a member of the Victoria Police VEOHRC Review Academic Governance Board (2017-2020), following VEOHRC’s Review of Sexual Harassment and Predatory Behaviour at Victoria Police. In 2018 Sara was invited to be expert advisor to the Australian Workers’ Delegation on the Standard- Setting Committee on Violence & Harassment in the World of Work, 107th Session of the International Labour Conference.

Sara has been invited to present expert evidence to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality & Safety and  to various state and federal Parliamentary committees, most recently to the Select Senate Committees on Job Security and on Work & Care. She has also presented expert evidence to the Fair Work Commission, most recently in the Aged Care Work Value Case. 

Sara is a Thinker in Residence for HumanAbility, the new Jobs and Skills council for  human services and other industries. She is on the Victorian government Equal Workplaces Advisory Council, co-convenor of the Work+Family Policy Roundtable, a network of Australian gender, work and care scholars and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Industrial Relations.

• Gender equality in employment
• Job quality & decent work
• Social care workforce
• Industrial and anti-discrimination law & practice
• Intersection of work & care

PhD (Legal Studies), Latrobe University

Graduate Diploma Government Law, University of Melbourne

BA (Hons), University of Melbourne

Diploma of Social Studies, University of Melbourne