The evisceration of equal employment opportunity in higher education.

With particular regard to gender, this paper considers the rise and fall of EEO in Australian universities over the last 30 years. The paper argues that EEO, a product of social liberalism, had barely been introduced before it became a casualty of the Dawkins reforms and the transformation of the university. Corporatisation resulted in top-down managerialism and the production of academics as neoliberal subjects. Within this context, identity politics either moved to the periphery or disappeared altogether, so far as staff were concerned. The discourse of equality was quickly displaced by new discourses, such as that of diversity, which better suited the market metanarrative. The market has also induced a shift away from staff to students, inviting the question as to whether EEO is now passé. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]