The Pink Women's Wellness Program Journal

The Pink Women's Wellness Program Journal is a Queensland University of Technology (School of Nursing and Midwifery) initiative supported by IHBI, The Kim Walters Choices Program, Cancer Council Queensland and HOCA. The 12-week program provides participants recovering from acute breast cancer treatment a comprehensive set of information and tools designed to help get their lives back on track. Through the adoption of positive lifestyle habits, the focus of the program is the management of key side effects such as menopausal symptoms, increased risk of osteoporosis, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. This website brings a successful pilot program to an online medium, offering participants many advantages over the existing print journal. Some of the key services offered by the website version are: - Easy to use data capture tools to track exercise, BMI, nutrition and menopausal symptoms. - Real-time graphs illustrating participants' progress day by day and week by week. - The opportunity for participants to interact through simple social media tools. - Program related reminders, notifications and motivational messages.

Intimate relationship status variations in violence against women : urban, suburban, and rural differences

Woman abuse varies across intimate relationship categories (e.g., marriage, divorce, separation). However, it is unclear whether relationship status variations in violence against women differ across urban, suburban, and rural areas. We test the hypothesis that rural females, regardless of their intimate partner relationship status, are at higher risk of intimate violence than their urban and suburban counterparts. Results indicate that marital status is an important aspect of the relationship between intimate victimization and geographic area and that rural divorced and separated females are victimized at rates exceeding their urban counterparts.

A longitudinal study of the impact of chronic psychological stress on health-related quality of life and clinical biomarkers : protocol for the Australian Healthy Aging of Women Study

BACKGROUND: Despite advancements in our understanding of the importance of stress reduction in achieving good health, we still only have limited insight into the impact of stress on cellular function. Recent studies have suggested that exposure to prolonged psychological stress may alter an individual's physiological responses, and contribute to morbidity and mortality. This paper presents an overview of the study protocol we are using to examine the impact of life stressors on lifestyle factors, health-related quality of life and novel and established biomarkers of stress in midlife and older Australian women.The primary aim of this study is to explore the links between chronic psychological stress on both subjective and objective health markers in midlife and older Australian women. The study examines the extent to which exposure frightening, upsetting or stressful events such as natural disasters, illness or death of a relative, miscarriage and relationship conflict is correlated with a variety of objective and subjective health markers.Methods/design: This study is embedded within the longitudinal Healthy Aging of Women's study which has collected data from midlife and older Australian women at 5 yearly intervals since 2001, and uses the Allostastic model of women's health by Groer and colleagues in 2010. The current study expands the focus of the HOW study and will assess the impact of life stressors on quality of life and clinical biomarkers in midlife and older Australian women to explain the impact of chronic psychological stress in women. DISCUSSION: The proposed study hypothesizes that women are at increased risk of exposure to multiple or repeated stressors, some being unique to women, and the frequency and chronicity of stressors increases women's risk of adverse health outcomes. This study aims to further our understanding of the relationships between stressful life experiences, perceived quality of life, stress biomarkers, chronic illness, and health status in women.

The adaptive metabolic response to exercise-induced weight loss influences both energy expenditure and energy intake

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVEs A decline in resting energy expenditure (REE) beyond that predicted from changes in body composition has been noted following dietary-induced weight loss. However, it is unknown whether a compensatory downregulation in REE also accompanies exercise (EX)-induced weight loss, or whether this adaptive metabolic response influences energy intake (EI). SUBJECTS/METHODS Thirty overweight and obese women (body mass index (BMI)=30.6±3.6 kg/m2) completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic EX. Body composition, metabolism, EI and metabolic-related hormones were measured at baseline, week 6 and post intervention. The metabolic adaptation (MA), that is, difference between predicted and measured REE was also calculated post intervention (MApost), with REE predicted using a regression equation generated in an independent sample of 66 overweight and obese women (BMI=31.0±3.9 kg/m2). RESULTS Although mean predicted and measured REE did not differ post intervention, 43% of participants experienced a greater-than-expected decline in REE (−102.9±77.5 kcal per day). MApost was associated with the change in leptin (r=0.47; P=0.04), and the change in resting fat (r=0.52; P=0.01) and carbohydrate oxidation (r=−0.44; P=0.02). Furthermore, MApost was also associated with the change in EI following EX (r=−0.44; P=0.01). CONCLUSIONS Marked variability existed in the adaptive metabolic response to EX. Importantly, those who experienced a downregulation in REE also experienced an upregulation in EI, indicating that the adaptive metabolic response to EX influences both physiological and behavioural components of energy balance.

Waves for change : the role of the South Tarawa-based women's interests program in the decolonisation process of the Gilbert Islands

This thesis has created a space for women in the history of the decolonisation of the Gilbert Islands. It traces the historical development of the national women's interests program in the Republic of Kiribati (formerly of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (GEIC)) as it was implemented through a network of women's clubs during the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis has provided the first history and interpretation of the Indigenous women's interests movement as it impacted the Gilbert Islands. It offers a narrative of the movement in terms of three overlapping waves of women leaders, based on an analysis of fieldwork, archival research and interviews conducted on South Tarawa, Kiribati.

Stress, lifestyle and quality of life in midlife and older Australian women : results from the stress and the health of women study

Background Chronic psychological stress may pose a serious threat to health, although the mechanisms are not fully understood. This study examines the impact of stress on modifiable lifestyle factors, depressive symptoms, health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and chronic illness in older Australian women. Methods Cross-sectional data were collected from a random sample of 181 older adults aged 60-70 years from rural and urban areas of South-East Queensland, Australia. We used structural equation modelling to examine associations between stress, modifiable lifestyle factors, HRQoL, and chronic illness. Findings Parameter estimates show that older women who reported life stressors where they felt helpless and feared for their life (high magnitude stressors) also reported higher body mass index (p = 0.03) and more chronic illness (p <0.01). In contrast, duration of exposure to life stressors was associated with higher depressive symptom scores (CES-D, p = 0.02) and sleep disturbance scores (p <0.01). Conclusions Our findings support the link between traumatic personal histories (exposure to high magnitude stressors) and unhealthy lifestyle factors. Findings highlight the need for more research on how stress reduction healthy lifestyle and positive coping strategies can be used to reduce the effects of high magnitude stress on health-related quality of life and chronic illness.

Cinema studies : Women's Experimental Cinema edited by Robin Blaetz

Women’s Experimental Cinema provides lively introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde women filmmakers, some of whom worked as early as the 1950s and many of whom are still working today. In each essay in this collection, a leading film scholar considers a single filmmaker, supplying biographical information, analyzing various influences on her work, examining the development of her corpus, and interpreting a significant number of individual films. The essays rescue the work of critically neglected but influential women filmmakers for teaching, further study, and, hopefully, restoration and preservation. Just as importantly, they enrich the understanding of feminism in cinema and expand the terrain of film history, particularly the history of the American avant-garde.

Conceptualising Women's Working Lives : Moving the Boundaries of Discourse

"Theoretical work on the career development of women has travelled a journey from critique to creation. Early work responded to and criticised a literature that focused on theorising male roles in a workplace that was conceptualised as providing vertical career paths primarily for middle class males. More recently theorists are creating new constructions and frameworks to enable a more holistic understanding of career, applicable to both women and men. These constructions include broadening the discussion from women’s careers to women’s working lives. This is the fifth book in the Sense Publishers Career Development Series. It features the vibrant work of contributors from around the world writing in the field of women’s working lives. It emphasises the need to explore theoretical connections and understandings in order to facilitate a more holistic and inclusive understanding of women’s working lives. The writers in the current volume acknowledge the changing roles of women, in both public and private spheres. Women’s roles in paid work are changing both in their nature and type of engagement. In addition, with an ageing population, women’s roles in care work are increasingly being extended from child care to aged care. This book provides a history of theorising about women's careers, in addition to presenting a focus on current empirical and theoretical work which contributes to understandings of women's working lives. It’s contributions both map the current discourse and challenge future work to extend the boundaries of that discourse."--publisher website

Towards an Australian Indigenous women's standpoint theory : a methodological tool

In this article I outline an Australian Indigenous women's standpoint theory. I argue that an Indigenous women's standpoint generates problematics informed by our knowledges and experiences. Acknowledging that Indigenous women's individual experiences will differ due to intersecting oppressions produced under social, political, historical and material conditions that we share consciously or unconsciously. These conditions and the sets of complex relations that discursively constitute us in the everyday are also complicated by our respective cultural differences and the simultaneity of our compliance and resistance as Indigenous sovereign female subjects.