Chapter 4 set out in broad terms class and gender theorists’ critique of socio-economic inequality in countries such as Australia. This chapter puts some flesh on those theoretical bones by exploring the ways in which education, training and employment policies and patterns help to reinforce or counter structural inequalities. Unlike some other chapters in Part VI, this chapter places little emphasis on political behaviour or institutions (Chapters 2 and 3), although their importance is implied in the sections of the chapter dealing with trade union campaigns. Other approaches to this topic might emphasise the importance of work and welfare discourses to the construction of certain social groups as deserving particular policy attention (Chapter 5). As with Chapter 26, the idea that Australia is enmeshed in the international context – in this case, an increasingly mobile international labour market – underlies much of the analysis (see Chapter 6).