Bacchi was subsequently hired by the University of Adelaide as a tutor in Australian history. She was also appointed to a teaching position in the Department of History at the University of Newcastle, alongside her husband. In 1979, Bacchi became the first female lecturer appointed by the University of Adelaide in the Politics Department and the first female to be granted tenure. In 1983, Bacchi published Liberation deferred? The ideas of the English-Canadian suffragists, 1877-1918, which was based on her thesis from McGill. The basis of the book centered around the idea that the early English-Canadian suffragists did not fail in their goal to enact a revolution amongst women, but rather were promoting the idea of a civil society consisting ofBritish elite. A few years later, Bacchi published Women and Peace Through the Polls through the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University. In 1990, Bacchi published Same difference: feminism and sexual difference through Allen & Unwin. At the end of the 1990s, Bacchi also published Women, policy and politics: The construction of policy problems. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2000. The next year, Bacchi was appointed a Visiting Scholar at the University of Ottawa Research Centre for Women and Politics. In 2003, Bacchi wrote Fear of Food: A Diary of Mothering, which chronicled her struggle with her first sons birth and early childhood. In 2009, she published Analysing Policy: What's the Problem Represented to Be? through Pearson Australia Pty Ltd and retired as an Emerita Professor. In 2010, Bacchi co-edited a book with Joan Eveline titled Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering Practices and Feminist Theory through the University of Adelaide Press. That same year, she was a Visiting Professor at two Denmark university's; University of Aalborg and Roskilde University. While there, she presented her paper titled Foucault, Policy and Rule: Challenging the Problem-Solving Paradigm to the Feminist Research Center in Aalborg. In 2012 Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic Interventions and Exchanges, an edited collection exploring her work, to which she also contributed, was published by the University of Adelaide Press. In 2014, Bacchi was granted a Visiting Professor status at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Two years later, she published Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice with Susan Goodwin where they addressed "What's the Problem Represented to Be?". They used a post-structural perspective and the works of Foucault to analyze public policy. In 2017, Bacchi was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Umeå University in Sweden.
