Non-disclosure agreements (or NDAs) are often key to reaching a settlement in sexual harassment cases. But should they be, and what are the risks of this practice? In this episode, Juliette Marchant and Dr Rachel Killean interview Sharmilla Bargon and Regina Featherstone, USyd Law’s inaugural Social Justice Practitioners-in-Residence about their research into this practice, and how they hope to advocate for legal reform in the future.
About our guests: Sharmilla Bargon is a specialist employment and discrimination law practitioner. She is a Senior Solicitor at Redfern Legal Centre and coordinates the Employment Rights Legal Service, a statewide employment rights service in NSW. She enjoys assisting migrant workers and working on broader law reform campaigns to achieve systemic change.
Regina Featherstone has been working to secure the rights of refugee and migrant workers since she started practising law. She is a Senior Lawyer in the Human Rights Law Centre Whistleblower Project and brings a unique expertise to empowering clients to right wrongdoing and breaking down structural barriers that prevent truth-telling.
Regina and Sharmilla share a passion for helping women and working towards breaking down systems of oppression for these clients, specifically, women experiencing multiple intersecting forms of disadvantage.
As the inaugural Social Justice Practitioners-in-Residence, in August and September 2023, Regina and Sharmilla researched the use of non-disclosure agreement in resolving sexual harassment matters.