Gender Research Network

Sex work is an issue impacted by a confluence of topics and disciplines, straddling issues of worker’s rights, human rights, moral panic and gender equality. In this seminar, Lena will take attendees through a brief overview of sex worker legislation, including a history of sex work legislation in WA, as well as a look at contemporary approaches to law reform and community organising from the sex worker rights movement. Drawing from lived experience and the collective wisdom of sex worker organising in Australia, the seminar aims to break down controversial topics and context.

“… you keep going, you keep pushing – yet, here you are; still here …” (Frank to Alice in Don’t Worry Darling)

What happens when the moment pauses? When the movement seems to cease? What happens when you’re urged to #GetOut? What #MeToo indexed, in its marking, in its saying, in its ‘hashing out’ is that the ‘me’ of feminist subjectivity and the ‘too’ of a collective form of that subjectivity always bears a remainder. There is something which the Symbolic (as language) will always miss; so too do fantasies of a united feminism, under the signifier ‘#MeToo’. Five years after the #MeToo moment the movement which it appeared to promise wanes. Revanchist patriarchy surges forth with eruption of #TradWives on TikTok, and the exhaustion of ‘#MeToo’ in the wake of clap-backs and call-outs of ‘cancel culture’.

Dr Overell has written elsewhere that it is no accident that #MeToo moved outwards from Hollywood. It required a particular force to push it along – the cinematic – which is why we have a plethora of ‘based on a true story’ films in the movement’s wake (i.e. Bombshell and more recently She Said). This paper re-turns to Hollywood with a consideration of Don’t Worry Darling (2022). Branded a “feminist psychological thriller in the wake of #MeToo” by Olivia Wilde, the director, DWD presents a trad wife dreamworld governed by a Jordan Peterson like guru. Drawing on Lacanian feminism, Dr Overell argues that DWD, in its spectacular box office failure, surrounding sexual scandal, and in the narrative itself, works as a site for the consolidation of feminist, but also patriarchal, anxieties after #MeToo.

Date: 25 October, 1-2pm AWST

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This research explores how senior leaders within an organisation take action to set and achieve gender targets. Dr Blin, with Professor Lina Pellicione and Professor Linley Lord, collected data among 20 senior leaders of two large regional organisations in the global south both in the process of implementing or initiating a Gender DEI strategy. Following a gender transformative leadership training programme, they explored the conditions for success of these senior leaders in establishing and reaching set targets and bring around real change. When initiating gender mainstreaming/transformation within an organisation, one big challenge is addressing implicit discriminatory processes. Rooted in norms and culture, changes in these implicit processes are difficult and often face resistance, not always consciously. Their data uncovered some typical behaviours an organisation may face when initiating gender mainstreaming, from support to resistance. They explore how organisations can find ways to be inclusive of all these various behavioural profiles, despite the tensions they may bring, to ensure that their gender DEI strategy be effective.

This paper argues that the new term ‘baby man’ has an impact on reconstructing established gender relationships and resisting China’s authoritarian political power in a highly-censored online environment. This study employs feminist critical discourse analysis to investigate how Chinese feminism adopts the discursive construction of ‘baby man’ and how they echo the complex historical and sociocultural backgrounds through a case study of 43 posts containing ‘baby man’ on Chinese social media. The finding suggests that the term ‘baby man’ is employed in discursive strategies, namely, double irony, the blunt resistance against both gender and power relationships that deconstruct the heteropatriarchal gender norm through the mother–son female gaze and contempt for the nation’s past and current population policy. It argues that these three discursive strategies help reconstruct the extant gender hierarchy backed by conservative Confucianist ethics and represent a grassroots challenge to the political authoritarianism indoctrinated by the state.

The AI sector has long battled ethical issues of racial and gender discrimination and bias. Efforts to address these issues have largely proved insufficient as they continue to emerge in new and different forms, as we are now seeing with the increasing use of generative AI. Also concerning is the relatively little critical attention being directed towards the use of AI in the news media industry. This lack of attention is significant given the influence that news media wield in shaping social norms and values, as well as reports about embedded racial and gender discrimination and bias within the news media industry itself. Further, as AI is present in the news media industry, and news media play a key role in reporting news about AI to the public, the two have a symbiotic relationship that warrants deeper interrogation.

Efforts to address racial and gender discrimination and bias within AI have been complicated by imaginaries of AI technologies as ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’; descriptors which are also shared by the news media industry. These assumptions of neutrality and objectivity problematically ignore the ways that prevailing attitudes towards race and gender sit deep within the social systems and cultures that shape both sectors.

Employing a sociotechnical imaginaries framework, Kao presents a theoretically driven critique of how AI imaginaries and the news media constitute “performed visions of desirable futures” (Jasanoff, 2015). It is by unpacking these imaginaries that we can gain a better understanding of how to address these broader issues of discrimination and bias both in AI and the news media.

In this talk, Gerrand explores how conspiracy thinking has been mobilized by alternative/new religious movement (NRM) influencers during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to map radicalization trajectories towards militant forms of conspiritual thinking and wellness. Her paper reviews recent trends in which a post-secular spiritual milieu within a low trust environment has generated the conspirituality movement. While conspirituality, a portmanteau of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘spirituality’, existed prior to the advent of COVID-19, this movement was accelerated significantly during the pandemic by a combination of enhanced online interactivity and perceived threats to freedom, bodily autonomy, gender and self-agency, as well as apparent opportunities for awakening, planetary ascension and transformation. These dynamics, she suggests with others, fostered increased crossover between the far right and radical action, producing a militant wellness movement that is prepared in both posture and action orientation for combat and conflict against perceived global elites across both government and private sectors. Her analysis of several key online influencers within militant wellness communities demonstrates how conspiritualist, anti-gender and proto-fascist narratives of purification, cleansing, ascension and control have intersected and nurtured one another, in conjunction with overtly accelerationist narratives that valorize violence and conflict. Such trajectories remind us that – like religion – spirituality, health and wellness may be co-opted by conspiracy thinking in ways we have yet to fully understand or respond to in prosocial ways.

Women in Australian universities constitute 58.3% of academic and professional staff but are underrepresented in leadership roles and experience multiple other disadvantages compared with men. Drawing on 53 consultations with university staff, leaders and other sectoral stakeholders and a review of university policies and practices, this paper identifies the drivers of gender inequalities in Australian universities, before identifying university approaches to addressing those inequalities. The research, funded by Universities Australia Women, finds that approaches and activities are inconsistent across the sector and even within individual universities. It also suggests that there are some areas in which universities are falling behind other knowledge-based organisations – who can offer universities innovative and transferable practices – and shares examples of leading gender-inclusive practices in universities and other knowledge organisations.

Date: 17 November, 2-3pm AWST

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Date: 17 November, 2-3pm AWST

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Date: 11 October, 4:00pm-5:00pm
RSVP: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au

Researchers are often passionate, driven individuals committed to solving intractable problems with the end goal of improving outcomes for humankind and our planet. In every discipline, there’s evidence of hard work, self-sacrifice and excellent outcomes in the research that’s reported. The ‘next steps’ of implementing research into practice, changing policy and ensuring key decision makers are aware of your research are, for many early researchers, a barrier too high. There are some strategic, incremental steps that can be taken along the research journey, that make these important ‘next steps’ smoother. Dr Zoe Bradfield will share from her experiences of the research > policy > advocacy work that she has undertaken; offering strategies to improve the reach and impact of the research that we do.

This study explored the personal and professional experiences of female principals in Catholic Composite and Secondary Schools (CCSS). The study identified the core demands and expectations of their role, as well as factors that encourage, sustain and challenge female principals. All these factors impacted the female principals’ decision to take on the principalship position. This study has given female principals in CCSS a voice, has raised concerns that female principals face in their leadership roles, has provided insight and sensitivity to the needs of women in leadership and has established what female principals offer to secondary educational leadership.

Presented by Dr. Katie Wilson. The scholarly literature continues to document gender biases, disparities, disadvantages and deficits in research productivity, gaining tenure and promotion within academia. Institutional pressure emphasises so-called ‘excellent’ research practices: to publish in ‘high impact’, prestigious, subscription-based journals.

A small body of evidence shows an emerging positive effect of open access/open science scholarly publishing on the gender imbalance. We’ll explore some examples, and the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) analysis of academic workforce gender demographics and correlations with research performance in Australian universities.

Drawing from Dr Sally Lamping’s and Dr Saul Karnovsky’s previous research on border identities, resourceful communities, and enabling contexts, this seminar examines how learning to teach shapes pre-service teacher self-formation.

It also aims to disrupt existing paradigms by exploring how a focus on resourceful school ecologies can enable emerging teachers to assertively claim the emotionality of teaching.

Prof. Helen Hodgson reports on the findings of her 2019 Provost Fellowship project, and presents suggestions as to how staff taking career breaks can be better supported. She also draws comparisons with the findings of a similar project conducted by Dorothea Bowyer at Western Sydney University.

Professor Iain McCalman and Professor Andrea Gaynor in Conversation with Dr Samantha Owen discussing “our need as humans to understand the grave implications and responsibilities entailed in sharing our multispecies planet” (p. 6, McCalman 2022).

The conversation follows the release of Delia Akeley and the Monkey: A Human-Animal Story of Captivity, Patriarchy and Nature. Published by Upswell, in Delia Akeley Iain McCalman tells the story of a baby female monkey captured during an East-African hunting expedition in 1909.

The Curtin University Gender Research Network (GRN) invites you to a seminar (online and in person) presented by Professor Jaya Dantas and Dr Siddier Chambers in conversation to discuss Navigating the academic journey as a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities (CALD) woman.

More information: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au

What do we mean by “gender” and how is it different to “sex”? Are there really only two genders? How did these concepts become so important? In this seminar, we will explore these and many other questions about the role of gender in today’s society. We will touch on the issues faced by people of diverse genders and explore practical ways to become more inclusive of gender diversity in research.

The Curtin University Gender Research Network (GRN) invites you to a seminar (online and in person) presented by Mx Misty Farquhar OAM to discuss Understanding Gender Diversity.

More information: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au

GRN Seminar and Workshop Series: Capitalising on Board Gender Diversity: The Mediating Effect of Board Capital Diversity on the Relationship between Board Gender Diversity and Firm Performance.

More information: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au

Mauritius has undergone tremendous economic and social transformation in the last 50 years, which has had a profound impact on Mauritian women. In this presentation, Dr Myriam Blin offers a glimpse of Mauritian women’s fascinating journey as they navigated and negotiated improved rights and opportunities in a traditional yet modernising landscape.

More information: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au

Why were men historically thought to be rational, and women hysterical? What does humoral theory have to do with gender? How was witchcraft a gendered crime? Prompted by the question of where the idea of ‘gender as binary’ originated, Dr Joanne McEwan will chart (Western) ideas about gender from the medieval period through to the nineteenth century.

More information: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au

The Curtin University Gender Research Network (GRN) invites you to an online event, with Dr Samantha Owen as McCalman and Gaynor discuss “our need as humans to understand the grave implications and responsibilities entailed in sharing our multispecies planet” (p. 6, McCalman 2022). The conversation follows the recent release of Delia Akeley and the Monkey: A Human-Animal Story of Captivity, Patriarchy and Nature. Published by Upswell, in Delia Akeley Iain McCalman tells the story of the casual capture a baby female monkey during an East-African hunting expedition in 1909.

More information: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au

The Curtin University Gender Research Network (GRN) Gender Reading Group seeks to encourage a culture of reading and critique, to help develop connection and community amongst fourth year undergraduate research and post-graduate research students across Curtin campuses. The group meets monthly online to engage in friendly discussion on seminal and more contemporary works on gender and intersectionality from a range of disciplines.

More information: genderresearchnetwork@curtin.edu.au

As our understanding of gender evolves, so does our understanding that some people’s sex and gender do not align, and that gender exists outside of the gender binary. So how do we support gender equity for women while also acknowledging and supporting trans and gender diverse people who may have varying connections or disconnections to, and intersecting identities with womanhood? In this presentation, ECU’s Prof Braden Hill, Dr Fiona Navin and Mr Stevie Lane will discuss the inclusion of trans and gender diverse experiences in conversations about gender equality, the importance of intersectionality, and the role universities play in educating for social justice and leading societal change.

More information: elizabeth.baca@curtin.edu.au.

Workforce diversity has been advocated as leading to better organisational outcomes and by far gender diversity is the most common diversity measure in place internationally.

Countries around the world have implemented policies or regulations promoting greater gender diversity in boardrooms. We investigate whether gender diversity on boards leads to higher Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) disclosures using 16,659 firm-year observations across 42 countries. Although gender diversity has been examined within a corporate social responsibility and ethical, social and governance lens, this examination needs to be extended to the SDGs given the latter’s multi-year horizon and involvement from governments, the private sector and a very broad cross-section of the global community.

We also answer a call from accounting researchers who seek more research into factors driving SDG disclosures given the significance from policy implications and impact on organisational responsibilities. In addition to providing useful comparative information on the countries, legal jurisdictions and types of SGDs currently being disclosed, our analyses reveal that gender diverse boards are associated with greater levels of SDG disclosures with such disclosures even more significant when there is more than a single female board member.

We also find that women board members are associated most with the PEOPLE and PLANET groups within the SDGs and our results are robust to additional analyses and endogeneity concerns. Consequently, our results reinforce calls globally for increasing gender representation at the highest levels of organisations given that women at senior levels of leadership are better able to meet the expectations of a greater range of stakeholders in terms of SDG disclosures.

Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira (1914-1933) was variously described as a child prodigy, the ‘Red Virgin’ of Spain’s Socialist movement, a pioneer of Spanish sexology, a feminist who ‘far surpasses [those women] who blazed the trail’, and a well-connected internationalist who cut ‘an exotic figure’ on the cultural landscape of republican Spain. The Madrid teenager’s legacy was curiously reconfigured by details that emerged after her death of a mother’s quest to create a eugenic daughter to lead the ‘redemption of Spanish womanhood’.

Dr Micaela Pattison’s book project is framed by meditation on the process by which records of Hildegart’s political activities and image in public life became tangled into an archive generated by medico-legal inquiries into her June 1933 death. This paper places a spotlight on the place of visual source material in that tangling. It will pay close attention to the function of studio portraits in development of Hildegart’s hybrid mode of self-presentation that blurred the boundaries of the salacious and scientific to advance her career and promote campaigns for women’s education, modern hygiene, sexual reform and eugenics.

Presented by Dr Bri McKenzie. The Curriculum Queering Community of Practice is an interdisciplinary, interuniversity collective of academic and professional staff and education graduates working in primary, secondary and tertiary education settings. Their role is to stimulate discussion, networking and share research and best-practice on LGBTQIA+ inclusive teaching and learning at all levels. Join us for a relaxed chat about the Community of Practice, learn about some of the current research projects underway and share your thoughts about the future direction of LGBTQIA+ inclusive education in Australia.

This paper reports on 30 interviews conducted with parents of high school-aged teens, youth workers, and teachers, as part of a larger study aimed at better understanding the gendered dimensions of youth sexting and social media use, and school and community responses to it.

Dr Amy Dobson outlines some of the findings on parent’s key concerns around digital and social media, their attitudes towards sexting and pornography, and their perceptions of the gendered dynamics of such. In prominent studies of children, youth, and digital media emerging from mass communications and psychology-oriented epistemologies, sexual images of diverse kinds have been framed as inherent “risks” for young people, with little social, cultural, or historical contextualisation of such. In Dobson’s discussion of the attitudes and views of the parents we spoke with, asking as we did about perceived gender roles and dynamics around social media use, they try to unpack the social construct of sexual images as inherently “risky”, and the individualised discourses of “privacy” and “protection” that stem from such notions; and that, Dobson suggests, ultimately remain within uncritically universalised victim-blaming logics around harm, violence, and abuse.

While progress is being made in terms of more political and socially structured conceptualisations of digital harms and forms of abuse, exploitation, and harassment, Dobson suggests interview data shows where some further shifts in public discourse and logics are still needed; away from networked publics as “out of control”, towards victim recourse and perpetrator accountability as regards image-based and other digital forms of sexual harassment, violence and abuse. Dobson points to the possibility of future “queerer” and more relational orientations (Ahmed, 2008; Munoz, 2009; Warner, 1998) towards sex and privacy.

Presented by Dr Catherine Kevin. Written from within the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition (saaac), this paper will examine the objectives of the Coalition’s activism, offer an account of the wins and losses that were fossilised in the outcomes of its five-year campaign: The Termination of Pregnancy Act (SA) 2021, and reflect on the status of abortion healthcare in Western Australia.

While the task of decriminalising abortion in every Australian jurisdiction is close to completion, achieving reproductive justice remains unfinished business while abortion provision suffers various hangovers from its history as a crime. The paper will consider the likely place of abortion decriminalisation in future histories of reproductive justice in Australia.

Charles Dickens sought to control the narratives of everyone he encountered, both in life and on the page. Dickens was captivated by the consequences of being (or not being) “the hero of my own life,” to quote David Copperfield. He even edited his own identity by burning his life-writing. Nonetheless, despite Dickens’s Victorian celebrity, he could not retain control forever, and his legacy is continually being re-imagined as new biographical details come to light.

Dr Kathryne Ford examines how the most significant women in Dickens’s life impacted him in the nineteenth century, and how their afterlives continue to influence his legacy today.

Presented by Dr Miriam Bankovsky. The broad aim of this talk is to show how social and political concerns have historically informed how economists (accepted as such by the discipline) have studied families, with a focus on New Household Economics of the 1960s onwards.

After a historical sketch of the late nineteenth century to the present, Miriam details how New Household Economists perceived recalcitrant family poverty as government induced. Methodological innovations (stable preferences for fundamental commodities, shadow price for non-market commodities, and consumption capital) permitted family behaviour to be analysed deductively as responses to price incentives (Herfeld 2013).

Early versions were associated with scepticism about welfare, institutions to keep family members to rational promises, low-interest loans for self-funding human-capital provision, and the rejection of progressive taxation, child allowances, and compensatory programs. Criticisms followed (feminist, gender diverse and ‘poor’), driven by the problematisation of gendered injustices in economic outcomes, and a need to render social problems more precise and local, to permit empirical testing of the effects of incentives.