Katherine Ravenswood

Katherine Ravenswood is a New Zealand professor of industrial relations and leads the Care/Work Research Group at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). She works on the interactions of power, gender and ethnicity in workplace relationships between employers and employees.

Academic career
Ravenswood's early interests were in philosophy and medieval literature, but she became interested in industrial relations during her study for an honours degree in business at AUT. Ravenswood completed a PhD titled Productivity, participation and employee wellbeing in the Residential Aged Care Sector at AUT in 2011. Her advisors were Candice Harris and Ray Markey. Ravenswood was promoted to full professor in 2023.

Ravenswood leads the Care/Work Research Group at Auckland University of Technology. She worked with Julie Douglas on assessing the impact on workers of the 2017 Pay Equity Settlement. They found that despite the increase in wages for carers, meant to address historic inequities, some people were less well-off after the settlement as their hours were reduced, possibly due to lack of funding in the sector.

When legislation to ensure reporting of the gender pay gap was announced, Ravenswood commented that the overall gap of 8% was hiding larger inequities in certain workforces, and in some ethnic groups. She said “I think [compulsory pay reporting] will normalize an understanding that there is discrimination on the basis of gender and hopefully whichever government is in will also make sure it’s on the basis of ethnicity as well. Then the facts will be there and it won't be controversial, because it's something everyone knows and reports.”

Ravenswood has been involved in policy development for New Zealand's care workforce and is part of the New Zealand Work Research Institute leadership team.