Whose Justice? A Turn to Relational Equality from the Experiences of Ethno-Racially Marginalised Women in Australian Workplaces

Abstract

This paper examines how ethno-racially marginalised women in Australian workplaces continue to be constrained by enduring organisational norms that privilege whiteness, masculinity, and Western/Anglo-cultural modes of participation. Further, we show how mainstream diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives reproduce exclusion and marginalisation in unintended and new ways by misrecognising or sidelining intersectional experiences. Through an intersectional reading of survey and interview data, we show how DEI initiatives frequently reflect narrow settings for equity that privilege dominant norms while rendering others invisible or “risky”. We engage with Elizabeth Anderson’s theory of relational equality to show that the shortcomings of these initiatives result not from idiosyncratic error or oversight but from the foundational logics that underpin them, including a business-case rationale and a default to distributive justice logics. We suggest that DEI should be reimagined as a practice of enabling equal participation, mutual recognition, and interpersonal justifications within organisational life. In doing so, the paper contributes both empirically and theoretically to current debates on workplace justice, intersectional equality, and the ethics of inclusion.