Fay Marles Equal Opportunity Sub Fund

The Exploring Effective Practices to Support Women Accountants to Reach their Potential project is funded by the Fay Marles Equal Opportunity Sub Fund. This fund was established in 2013 to honour the leadership and legacy of Victoria’s first Equal Opportunity Commissioner, Fay Marles AM.

The Victorian Equal Opportunity Act was passed in 1977 and Fay was appointed that same year. For the next decade she led the way in implementing anti-discrimination reform, enabling women to take their place more equally in our workplaces and our community.

The Sub Fund supports projects that provide:

• leadership training to increase young women’s working knowledge of equal opportunity legislation, structures and processes;
• research that strengthens knowledge of loopholes and gaps in equal opportunity legislation, with a view to system improvement and policy change; or
• education and engagement on equal opportunity issues in workplaces, organisations and in the broader community.

Project: Exploring effective practices to support women accountants to reach their potential

Organisation: Monash Univeristy
Grant type: Sub Fund
Amount: $3,784
Year: 2019-20
Website: www.monash.edu/

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Professions, such as accounting, have low rates of female retention and women rarely enter senior leadership roles. Organisations that develop formal and informal supporting practices aim to provide equal opportunity for women but there is little empirical research on the impact and effectiveness of these practices.

This study will determine the most effective supportive practices that organisations provide for women and will demonstrate whether these practices effectively support women in the workplace. This study examines the effectiveness of both formal and informal supporting practices for working women and the extent to which these practices create an environment of interpersonal trust and psychological empowerment: conditions important for women’s psychological and workplace well-being.