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This chapter situates the South Pacific region’s engagement in progressing gender equality and women’s empowerment within broader gender and development (GAD) debates. It explores the international ‘gender agenda’ and how its associated frameworks, platforms, policies and metrics have diffused throughout the South Pacific. Limited progress in achieving gender equality and empowerment goals has been made, globally and regionally, with considerable challenges yet to be overcome. Complementing the book’s focus on the integration of gender into agricultural research and development projects, the chapter reviews rural women’s access to income and land in the South Pacific, and their contributions to agricultural production and marketing.

With the decentralization and deregulation of the labor market over the past decade or so, there has been considerable debate about the future of industrial relations as a discipline or field of enquiry in Australia. Much of this literature assumes a discipline in decline, or at least at a crossroads, in terms of its purpose and continued relevance. In order to both evaluate these general claims and provide a more nuanced understanding of the future of the field in Australia, this chapter examines industrial relations in terms of three major dimensions: as a field of teaching, research, and practice. This exercise reveals important differences about the situation facing the discipline. Despite advances by human resource management (HRM) in universities, the teaching of industrial relations remains important even if its separate identity is contracting slightly at the present time. In terms of research, the multi-disciplinary and policy-oriented approach has much to contribute to understanding the changing world of industrial relations in Australia and remains a strong dimension of the field. However, in the area of industrial relations practice we observe a major decline as industrial relations and human resource professionals in Australia have become less important both in the wider regulation of work and within business organizations. We conclude that the field needs to broaden its focus to ‘work and employment relations’, seek more theoretically informed ways to explain contemporary developments in labor markets and societies, while at the same time remain committed to its traditional goals of equity and efficiency.

It is over 25 years since the Hancock Report recommended that Australian enterprises implement workplace level procedures for the resolution of disputes and grievances. Legislation now requires that all enterprise agreements contain dispute settlement procedures (DSPs). While most large organisations have enterprise agreements – and therefore DSPs – there is very little empirical research into how and whether Australian organisations use these DSPs – let alone what broader role they may play in regulating the employer–employee relationship. This chapter seeks to provide answers to these questions.

This chapter presents the results of three case studies of large organisations: a bank, a retailer and a state government agency. These organisations have been chosen from a larger group of case studies to illustrate three approaches to the management of workplace disputes. The organisations share certain features such as: the effective use of workplace procedures to resolve the great majority of workplace disputes; and the adoption of a ‘dual system’ with internal grievance procedures playing a role alongside DSPs. However they vary considerably in their approach to dispute resolution. The Bank's ‘strategic’ approach involves a comprehensive conflict management system. The State government agency's ‘reactive’ approach to workplace conflict resolution gives a much greater role for third parties, while the Retailer's ‘pragmatic’ approach incorporates elements from both the other two approaches.

The chapter discusses the implications of this diversity of approach for human resource management, organisational justice and workplace relations.