Gender Policy Matters: Reviewing Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools (1996) - Part 1: Policy formation/ policy dissemination/ policy dispersal

This section of the symposium invites participants to consider the processes and practices of policy formation around the time of the development of the Gender Equity Framework including processes of collaboration, caucuses and alliances across differences. Framing questions include: How is policy formed? How does policy move? What does policy stick to, and what sticks to policy? What other texts/contexts/ events impacted on the processes of formation, dissemination and dispersal of the Gender Equity Framework (e.g. Beavis & Laskey, 1996)? What variations and repetitions emerged amongst national, state and local contexts; and amongst policy actors involved in the processes? How was policy dissemination supported through diverse practices and materials (e.g. The Gen)? This section builds on the extensive work of previous scholars (e.g. (e.g. Ailwood & Lingard, 2001; Keddie, 2009, 2010; Lingard, 2003; Mills, Francis & Skelton, 2009; Mills, Martino & Lingard, 2007; Mills & Keddie, 2010; 1999, 2008). How might we develop policy narratives and that move beyond familiar (feminist) stories of progress and loss (e.g. the ‘boy turn’ and recuperative masculinity politics) (Hemmings, 2011), that pay due attention to the views of the ‘hewers and drawers of policy work’ (Ball, 2015, 467)?