Kairos and the time of gender equity policy in Australian schooling

Almost 20 years ago the Australian government released Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools (1997). It was adopted by all states but almost immediately disappeared from sight after a conservative change of government. This was followed by the dismantling of gender equity units in each state, and a turn to boys’ education that eclipsed the more complex strategies and theoretical underpinnings of the Framework. This paper takes up the Gender Equity Framework (1997) as a case of policy emergence, mutation and dissipation. In particular, it attends to feminist temporality, and its affective force, to begin to trouble conventional accounts of these policy shifts. Close readings of sections of the policy document and of interviews with policy actors working at that time are analysed through the notion of kairos – timeliness, or political actions that open opportunities, breaks and ruptures – in order to provide new insights into the policy moment of gender equity in Australian schooling.