time, the limitation or incapacity of the LGBTQ+ community and wider society to create events for people to come together created a vacuum for commercialised ‘celebrations’. A senior female leader said that although her organisation was among the leaders in LGBTQ+ inclusion in construction in Australia, more could be done: I feel kind of like it's bland and neutral. I don't feel celebrated for my difference. It's almost like we're not negative ... It's not particularly positive either. So, we're less shit than we used to be and we're not bad, we don't discriminate against you – at least not that you know of. It's certainly not a ‘Wow, this is amazing, I feel so proud to work for this organisation’. I think there's some other organisations that have been a lot better at being way more overt and cutting edge and innovative, like whether it's Qantas or others. I think we fill in all the right forms and, you know, we're not bad ... But, we're not also really celebrated either. I mean not that I need everybody to greet me in the office with a gay flag every day, but it would be nice if we were a little bit more [effort from leaders]. Whilst it was great [to legislate for marriage equality], it's kind of like ‘Oh well, that's done and dusted now, but the issue is that you've got the religious freedom bill and you’ve got the right to discriminate in Australia. Lesbian, female, 40s One participant highlighted the concern that creating employee resource groups may have the unintended effect of creating more division in the workplace: We were going to allow each group to go away and form their own kind of community group and I said "yeah, good. But what are you doing? Are you creating a silo? Are you saying women you'll go over there, men you go over there, gays you go over, Indigenous you go over there and form your groups." So, now there's a big focus - a shift from diversity to making environments all inclusive. Gay, male, 50s
POLICIES AND HUMAN RESOURCES Participants acknowledged that some companies have established policies that support LGBTQ+ inclusivity, yet most thought more could be done. Formal policies and initiatives often appeared to be the result of sustained individual action to obtain institutional support
41
