Power of engineering : changing the perceptions of year 9 and 10 female school students towards an engineering career

BACKGROUND The engineering profession in Australia has failed to attract young women for the last decade or so despite all the effort that have gone into promoting engineering as a preferred career choice for girls. It is a missed opportunity for the profession to flourish as a heterogeneous team. Many traditional initiatives and programs have failed to make much impact or at best incremental improvement into attracting and retaining more women in the profession. The reasons why girls and young women in most parts of the world show little interest in engineering haven't changed, despite all the efforts to address them, the issue proposed here in this paper is with the perceptions of engineering in the community and the confidence to pursue it. This gender imbalance is detrimental for the engineering profession, and hence an action-based intervention strategy was devised by the Women in Engineering Qld Chapter of Engineers Australia in 2012 to change the perceptions of school girls by redesigning the engagement strategy and key messages. As a result, the “Power of Engineering Inc” (PoE) was established as a not-for-profit organisation, and is a collaborative effort between government, schools, universities, and industry. This paper examines a case study in changing the perceptions of year 9 and 10 school girls towards an engineering career. PURPOSE To evaluate and determine the effectiveness of an intervention in changing the perceptions of year 9 and 10 school girls about engineering career options, but specifically, “What were their perceptions of engineering before today and have those perceptions changed?” DESIGN/METHOD The inaugural Power of Engineering (PoE) event was held on International Women’s Day, Thursday 8 March 2012 and was attended by 131 high school female students (year 9 and 10) and their teachers. The key message of the day was “engineering gives you the power to change the world”. A questionnaire was conducted with the participating high school female students, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. The survey instrument has not been validated. RESULTS The key to the success of the event was as a result of collaboration between all participants involved and the connection created between government, schools, universities and industry. Of the returned surveys (109 of 131), 91% of girls would now consider a career in engineering and 57% who had not considered engineering before the day would now consider a career in engineering. Data collected found significant numbers of negative and varying perceptions about engineering careers prior to the intervention. CONCLUSIONS The evidence in this research suggests that the intervention assisted in changing the perceptions of year 9 and 10 female school students towards engineering as a career option. Whether this intervention translates into actual career selection and study enrolment is to be determined. In saying this, the evidence suggests that there is a critical and urgent need for earlier interventions prior to students selecting their subjects for year 11 and 12. This intervention could also play its part in increasing the overall pool of students engaged in STEM education.

Masturbation and the media

This paper explores the important role the media play in informing young people about masturbation. A pilot study of focus groups with twenty-two young Australians, aged between 14-16 explored what they know about sex and sexuality, and where they have found that knowledge. This paper reports on their knowledge about masturbation. Although researchers agree that masturbation can be a positive part of healthy sexual development, most young people reported that they received very little positive information about it from their parents or in formal sex education in school. These young people’s discussions around this topic were largely ambivalent, but also highly complex due to the varying levels and types of information that they receive. In this context the media play a vital role in providing information about masturbation through books and magazines for young women, and television comedies for young men.

Factors associated with common mental disorders during the transition to adulthood : do emerging adults and ‘early starters’ differ? Findings from an Australian birth cohort study

Background: Despite increasing diversity in pathways to adulthood, choices available to young people are influenced by environmental, familial and individual factors, namely access to socioeconomic resources, family support and mental and physical health status. Young people from families with higher socioeconomic position (SEP) are more likely to pursue tertiary education and delay entry to adulthood, whereas those from low socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to attain higher education or training, and more likely to partner and become parents early. The first group are commonly termed ‘emerging adults’ and the latter group ‘early starters’. Mental health disorders during this transition can seriously disrupt psychological, social and academic development as well as employment prospects. Depression, anxiety and most substance use disorders have early onset during adolescence and early adulthood with approximately three quarters of lifetime psychiatric disorders having emerged by 24 years of age. Aims: This thesis aimed to explore the relationships between mental health, sociodemographic factors and family functioning during the transition to adulthood. Four areas were investigated: 1) The key differences between emerging adults and ‘early starters’, were examined and focused on a series of social, economic, and demographic factors as well as DSM-IV diagnoses; 2) Methodological issues associated with the measurement of depression and anxiety in young adults were explored by comparing a quantitative measure of symptoms of anxiety and depression (Achenbach’s YSR and YASR internalising scales) with DSM-IV diagnosed depression and anxiety. 3) The association between family SEP and DSM-IV depression and anxiety was examined in relation to the different pathways to adulthood. 4) Finally, the association between pregnancy loss, abortion and miscarriage, and DSM-IV diagnoses of common psychiatric disorders was assessed in young women who reported early parenting, experiencing a pregnancy loss, or who had never been pregnant. Methods: Data were taken from the Mater University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP), a large birth cohort started in 1981 in Brisbane, Australia. 7223 mothers and their children were assessed five times, at 6 months, 5, 14 and 21 years after birth. Over 3700 young adults, aged 18 to 23 years, were interviewed at the 21-year phase. Respondents completed an extensive series of self-reported questionnaires and a computerised structured psychiatric interview. Three outcomes were assessed at the 21-year phase. Mental health disorders diagnosed by a computerised structured psychiatric interview (CIDI-Auto), the prevalence of DSM-IV depression, anxiety and substance use disorders within the previous 12-month, during the transition (between ages of 18 and 23 years) or lifetime were examined. The primary outcome “current stage in the transition to adulthood” was developed using a measure conceptually constructed from the literature. The measure was based on important demographic markers, and these defined four independent groups: emerging adults (single with no children and living with parents), and three categories of ‘early starter’, singles (with no children or partner, living independently), those with a partner (married or cohabitating but without children) and parents. Early pregnancy loss was assessed using a measure that also defined four independent groups and was based on pregnancy outcomes in the young women This categorised the young women into those who were never pregnant, women who gave birth to a live child, and women who reported some form of pregnancy loss, either an abortion or a spontaneous miscarriage. A series of analyses were undertaken to test the study aims. Potential confounding and mediating factors were prospectively measured between the child’s birth and the 21-year phase. Binomial and multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate the risk of relevant outcomes, and the associations were reported as odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). Key findings: The thesis makes a number of important contributions to our understanding of the transition to adulthood, particularly in relation to the mental health consequences associated with different pathways. Firstly, findings from the thesis clearly showed that young people who parented or partnered early fared worse across most of the economic and social factors as well as the common mental disorders when compared to emerging adults. That is, young people who became early parents were also more likely to experience recent anxiety (OR=2.0, 95%CI 1.5-2.8) and depression (OR=1.7, 95%CI 1.1-2.7) than were emerging adults after taking into account a range of confounding factors. Singles and those partnering early also had higher rates of lifetime anxiety and depression than emerging adults. Young people who partnered early, but were without children, had decreased odds of recent depression; this may be due to the protective effect of early marriage against depression. It was also found that young people who form families early had an increased risk of cigarette smoking (parents OR=3.7, 95%CI 2.9-4.8) compared to emerging adults, but not heavy alcohol (parents OR=0.4, 95%CI 0.3-0.6) or recent illicit drug use. The high rates of cigarette smoking and tobacco use disorders in ‘early starters’ were explained by common risk factors related to early adversity and lower SEP. Having a child and early marriage may well function as a ‘turning point’ for some young people, it is not clear whether this is due to a conscious decision to disengage from a previous ‘substance using’ lifestyle or simply that they no longer have the time to devote to such activities because of child caring. In relation to the methodological issues associated with assessing common mental disorders in young adults, it was found that although the Achenbach empirical internalising scales successfully predicted both later DSM-IV depression (YSR OR=2.3, 95%CI 1.7-3.1) and concurrently diagnosed depression (YASR OR=6.9, 95%CI 5.0- 9.5) and anxiety (YASR OR=5.1, 95%CI 3.8- 6.7), the scales discriminated poorly between young people with or without DSM-IV diagnosed mood disorder. Sensitivity values (the proportion of true positives) for the internalising scales were surprisingly low. Only a third of young people with current DSM-IV depression (range for each of the scales was between 34% to 42%) were correctly identified as cases by the YASR internalising scales, and only a quarter with current anxiety disorder (range of 23% to 31%) were correctly identified. Also, use of the DSM-oriented scales increased sensitivity only marginally (for depression between 2-8%, and anxiety between 2-6%) above the standard Achenbach scales. This is despite the fact that the DSM-oriented scales were originally developed to overcome the poor prediction of DSM-IV diagnoses by the Achenbach scales. The internalising scales, both standard and DSM-oriented, were much more effective at identifying young people with comorbid depression and anxiety, with OR’s 10.1 to 21.7 depending on the internalising scale used. SEP is an important predictor of both an early transition to adulthood and the experience of anxiety during that time Family income during adolescence was a strong predictor of early parenting and partnering before age 24 but not early independent living. Compared to families in the upper quintile, young people from families with low income were nearly twice as likely to live with a partner and four times more likely to become parents (OR ranged from 2.6 to 4.0). This association remained after adjusting for current employment and education level. Children raised in low income families were 30% more likely to have an anxiety disorder (OR=1.3, 95%CI 0.9-1.9), but not depression, as young adults when compared to children from wealthier families. Emerging adults and ‘early starters’ from low income families did not differ in their likelihood of having a later anxiety disorder. Young women reporting a pregnancy loss had nearly three times the odds of experiencing a lifetime illicit drug disorder (excluding cannabis) [abortion OR=3.6, 95%CI 2.0-6.7 and miscarriage OR=2.6, 95%CI 1.2-5.4]. Abortion was associated with alcohol use disorder (OR=2.1, 95%CI 1.3- 3.5) and 12-month depression (OR=1.9, 95%CI 1.1- 3.1). These finding suggest that the association identified by Fergusson et al between abortion and later psychiatric disorders in young women may be due to pregnancy loss and not to abortion, per se. Conclusion: Findings from this thesis support the view that young people who parent or partner early have a greater burden of depression and anxiety when compared to emerging adults. As well, young women experiencing pregnancy loss, from either abortion or miscarriage, are more likely to experience depression and anxiety than are those who give birth to a live infant or who have never been pregnant. Depression, anxiety and substance use disorders often go unrecognised and untreated in young people; this is especially true in young people from lower SEP. Early identification of these common mental health disorders is important, as depression and anxiety experienced during the transition to adulthood have been found to seriously disrupt an individual’s social, educational and economic prospects in later life.

Girls and violence : the case for a feminist theory of female violence

Rises recorded for girls’ violence in countries like Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and United States have been hotly contested. One view is these rising rates of violence are an artefact of new forms of policy, policing, criminalisation and social control over young women. Another view is that young women may indeed have become more violent as they have increasingly participated in youth subcultural activities involving gangs and drugs, and cyber‐cultural activities that incite and reward girls’ violence. Any comprehensive explanation will need to address how a complex interplay of cultural, social, behavioural, and policy responses contribute to these rises. This article argues that there is no singular cause, explanation or theory that accounts for the rises in adolescent female violence, and that many of the simple explanations circulating in popular culture are driven by an anti‐feminist ideology. By concentrating on females as victims of violence and very rarely as perpetrators, feminist criminology has for the most part ducked the thorny issue of female violence, leaving a discursive space for anti‐feminist sentiment to reign. The article concludes by arguing the case for developing a feminist theory of female violence.

Lessons from a face-to-face meeting on embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives : ‘A contract of intimacy’

This paper presents the findings from a conversation between an Aboriginal educator and a non-Indigenous pre-service educator about the importance and complexities of building productive partnerships. Although the participants focused on the challenges and benefits of building relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators and non-Indigenous educators in Australian early years settings, the more significant outcome of the meeting was the personal connection two young women were able to make when a friendship began to develop. The project was intended to enable an opportunity for the participants ‘to engage in reflexivity on their pedagogic work’, something Mills (2012) understands as crucial to the support of social justice and transformation in the classroom.

Sex differences in the perceived value of outreach and museums/science centres in students' decisions to enrol in university science, technology and engineering courses

This paper reports a number of findings from the Interests and Recruitment in Science (IRIS) study carried out in Australia in 2011. The findings concern the perceptions of first year university students in science, technology and engineering courses about the influence of museums/science centres and outreach activities on their choice of course. The study found that STE students in general tended to rate museums/science centres as more important in their decisions than outreach activities. However, a closer examination showed that females in engineering courses were significantly more inclined to rate outreach activities as important than were males in engineering courses or females in other courses. The implications of this finding for strategies to encourage more young women into engineering are discussed.

Drinking games participation among female students at a regional Australian university

Participation in drinking games (DGs) by university students is often associated with heavy drinking and negative social and health impacts. Although research in Australia indicates that university students tend to drink at risky levels, there is paucity of literature on DGs among students, especially those residing at regional universities. This research examined drinking among female college students of white background. Eighteen female students participated in face-to-face in-depth interviews to describe their DG experiences. Most women played DGs for social and monetary reasons, with many drinking high volumes of alcohol during the game. Excessive drinking was linked with the type of beverage consumed. Despite knowing the health risks associated with DGs, there was a strong social imperative for these young women to play these games. Research and public health initiatives to better understand and address problematic drinking activities in rural and regional Australia have tended to ignore women and the dominant white populations whose heavy drinking has been largely restricted to private spheres.

UafB is a serine-rich repeat adhesin of Staphylococcus saprophyticus that mediates binding to fibronectin, fibrinogen and human uroepithelial cells

Staphylococcus saprophyticus is an important cause of urinary tract infection (UTI), particularly among young women, and is second only to uropathogenic Escherichia coli as the most frequent cause of UTI. The molecular mechanisms of urinary tract colonization by S. saprophyticus remain poorly understood. We have identified a novel 6.84 kb plasmid-located adhesin-encoding gene in S. saprophyticus strain MS1146 which we have termed uro-adherence factor B (uafB). UafB is a glycosylated serine-rich repeat protein that is expressed on the surface of S. saprophyticus MS1146. UafB also functions as a major cell surface hydrophobicity factor. To characterize the role of UafB we generated an isogenic uafB mutant in S. saprophyticus MS1146 by interruption with a group II intron. The uafB mutant had a significantly reduced ability to bind to fibronectin and fibrinogen. Furthermore, we show that a recombinant protein containing the putative binding domain of UafB binds specifically to fibronectin and fibrinogen. UafB was not involved in adhesion in a mouse model of UTI; however, we observed a striking UafB-mediated adhesion phenotype to human uroepithelial cells. We have also identified genes homologous to uafB in other staphylococci which, like uafB, appear to be located on transposable elements. Thus, our data indicate that UafB is a novel adhesin of S. saprophyticus that contributes to cell surface hydrophobicity, mediates adhesion to fibronectin and fibrinogen, and exhibits tropism for human uroepithelial cells.

Our true colours: A collage of four womens’ stories

The Our True Colours project brought together a group of four young women from refugee backgrounds to explore life narratives using visual arts and participatory video. The video is a celebration of their strengths and insights into the resettlement process. The Our True Colours storytelling project included an interactive art exhibition, a public screening event on International Women’s Day in 2014 and the creation of a website to permanently host the project: ourtruecolours.org

Designing a mobile social tool that moderates drinking

A novel mobile social networking tool uses peer support to facilitate responsible drinking among young women. Focus group reports indicate that the tool’s design is easy to use and its functionalities would help peers reduce risk during drinking sessions.

Ylirajaisia suhteita : Helsingin olympialaiset, Armi Kuusela ja ylikansallinen historia

In 1952 Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympic Games and Armi Kuusela, the current “Maiden of Finland”, was at the same time crowned Miss Universe. In popular history writing, these events have been designated as a crucial turning point – the end of an era marked by war and deprivation and the beginning of a modern, Western nation. Symptomatically, both events were marked by Finnish women’s sexual relationships with foreign men. The Olympics were shadowed by a concern over Finnish women’s “undue friendliness” with the Olympic guests, and Armi Kuusela's world tour was cut short by her surprise marriage in Tokyo and subsequent emigration to the Philippines. This study is an inquiry into the Helsinki Olympics and the public persona of Armi Kuusela from the point of view of transnational heterosexuality and the constitution of Finnish national identity. Methodologically the two main components of the study are intersectionality, defined here as a focus on the mutual histories and effects of discourses of gender, sexuality, race and nation; and transnational history as a way of exploring the ways that both nations and sexual subjects are embedded in global relations of power. The analysis proceeds by way of contextual and intertextual readings of various sources. Part one, centering on the Olympics, involves a campaign mounted by certain women’s organizations before the Games in order to educate young women about the potential dangers of the forthcoming international event as well as magazine and newspaper articles published during and after the Games concerning the encounter between young Finnish women and foreign, especially “Southern,” men. It places the debates during the Olympics within the framework of wartime understandings of women’s sexuality; the history of the concept of decency (siveellisyys); post-war population policy; the intersectional histories of conceptions pertaining to race and sexuality; and finally, the post-war concerns over women’s migration from rural areas to the capital city and their potential emigration abroad. Part two deals with the persona of Armi Kuusela and the public reception of her world tour and marriage, based on material from both Finland and the Philippines (newspapers, magazines, advertisements, books and films). It examines the persona of Armi Kuusela as a figure of national import in terms of the East/West divide; the racialized images of different geographic climates and Oriental “Others;” the meaning of whiteness in the Philippines; the significance of class and colonial history for the domestication of sexual and racial transgressions implied by an unconventional transnational marriage; as well as the cultural logics of transnational desire and its possible meanings for women in 1950s Finland. The study develops two arguments. First, it suggests that instead of being purely oppositional to national discourses, transnational desire may also be viewed as a product of these very discourses. Second, it claims that the national significance of both the Olympics and the persona of Armi Kuusela was due to the new points of comparison they both offered for national identity construction. In comparison with the sexualized Southern men at the Olympics and the racialized Orient in the representations of Armi Kuusela’s travels and marriage, Finland emerged as part of the civilized North, placed firmly within the perimeters of Western Europe. As such, both events mark a “whitening” of the Finnish people as well as a distancing from their previous designations in racial hierarchies. At the same time, however, the process of becoming a white nation inevitably meant complying with and reproducing racial hierarchies, rather than simply abolishing them.

Meän tapa puhua : Tornionlaakso pellolaisnuorten subjektiivisena paikkana ja murrealueena

This folk linguistic and human geographic study deals with dialect awareness, dialect use and place attachment. The study discusses theoretical and methodological issues current in sociolinguistics suggesting that the study of attitudes should be regarded as a core area in the study of variation and change. Furthermore, it is suggested that instead of putting effort into improving mental mapping methodology (adopted into folk linguistics from behavioural geography of the 1960 s), the more up-to-date thinking of space in geography should be adopted. The region and the dialect are treated as perceptual constructs in the study. The dialect perceptions of high school seniors in the Finnish Tornio Valley are examined trough a triangulation method involving a questionnaire, interviews and dialect recognition test as the research methods. The h in non-initial syllables (e.g. lähethä(ä)n, saunhaan ~ sauhnaan let s go into sauna ) turns out, expectedly, as the most salient feature in the dialect awareness of the locals and in terms of local identity construction. This feature is no longer heard in most of the present dialects of Finnish but is still thriving in the Tornio Valley in the cross-border dialect area. The metathetic variant (saunhaan > sauhnaan into sauna , käymhään > käyhmään to go ) is a characteristic feature of the Tornio Valley dialect. However, individual differences have long been found in the use of the h. This study challenges the essentialist variationist view of social categories (gender) by analysing variation from a quantitative but emic and human geographic point of view. The study shows that the variation of the h is statistically significantly patterned in terms of the degree of feeling of insideness vs. outsideness. New light is shed on the gender differences found in earlier sociolinguistic studies: differences in dialect use between and inside gender groups are illuminated by the fact that, in this case, it is young women who are generally less attached to the local community than young men, but this does not hold for all the individuals. The ideological motivation for preservation of the h seems to be based on the imagined community of Tornio Valley covering both the Swedish and the Finnish valley area. The general image of the dialect area and it s speakers, the shared cognitive dialect boundaries of the locals and the particularly deep level of awaress of the linguistic variation of the h are notable resources of the Tornio valley identity. Hyperdialectic forms analogical to the most frequently attested metathetic forms are found in the interview data, predicting that in this dialect the h will be maintained also in the future.

Vääränikäisiä äitejä? : Ikä ja äitiyden yhteiskunnalliset ehdot

This dissertation reports on research on the contradictions between “right-aged” motherhood accordant with normative life-course and the motherhood of a woman who lives her life according to her own choices and options. The focus of this study is to analyse and interpret the motherhood of women who have become mothers for the first time both at a very young age (under 20) and at an older age (in their 40s), from the viewpoint of life-course, age and social class. The study discusses motherhood both as an experience and as a socially-constructed phenomenon. Research questions are the following: How do mothers at different ages talk about pregnancy and motherhood as a part of their life-course? What meanings do mothers at different ages give to age, growing up and adulthood? How is social class constructed in the speech of different-aged mothers? This dissertation includes five articles and a summary chapter. The theoretical starting points for the study are Finnish critical family studies, Finnish feminist social policy studies and Anglo-American feminist motherhood studies. Additionally, this study draws on sociological age studies and new sociological social class studies. The methodological approach is discursive-materialistic. This approach recognises issues related to language, cultural representation and subjectivity, but it also aims to locate them in their social and historical context. The data is drawn from twenty-four interviews of different-aged mothers and articles collected from popular magazines on babies and parenting. In the interview data, different issues related to motherhood are constructed due not only to the women’s age, but also their social background. Social class becomes visible in the relationship between the interviewed women and nuclear family, expert knowledge or money and livelihood. In this study, social class and age are intertwined. It is almost impossible to analytically distinguish which of the mothers’ experiences are related to class and which are related to age. In this study, young motherhood is shown as quite positive. Even though the interviewed young women did not usually plan to have a child, it was not a great shock either. In the young mothers’ speech, motherhood appears as a natural part of the life-course and growing up. The conditions young mothers suggested as necessary to good motherhood do not depend on standard of living, education or social background. A young age is seen as a resource, not as an obstacle to good motherhood. Postponing one’s motherhood is associated with materialism and a career-oriented lifestyle. The older mothers in this study rarely reported having postponed their motherhood on purpose. Some of them explained the delay with extended studies or financial insecurity caused by part-time unemployment. Others recounted they had been insecure about their abilities to cope with a child or lacked a suitable partner. Some of them may have wanted a child much earlier in life, given the right circumstances. In the older mothers’ speech, motherhood is strongly associated with adult life, permanent employment and a (heterosexual) nuclear family.

Students at a Landheim school

Group of unidentified young women wearing flower wreaths in their hair with one unidentified man on the steps of a building; students at a Landheim school

Kuluttajuuden rakentuminen nuorten kertomuksissa

This study examines the narrative construction of consumerism in Finnish consumer culture in the early 21st century. The objects of the study are consumer life stories and essays on environmentally friendly consumption, written by 15-19-year-old high school students. Moreover, group discussions were used as additional research material. The data was gathered at five high schools in different areas of Finland. Young people's consumer narratives are interpreted through cultural stories and consumer ethos such as self-control, gratification and green consumerism. The narrative research approach is used to analyse what types of consumer positions these young people construct in stories on their own consumer history, and what kinds of ideas and thought patterns they construct on green consumerism. The study creates a multifaceted image of young people as agents in consumer society. They construct archetypical stories of wastrels and scrooges, as well as prudent and environmentally friendly consumers. Consumption and expenditure are however mostly a continuous battle between self-control and giving in to gratification. This reality is illustrated among other things by clever expressions invented by young people, such as Carefree Pennywise, Prudent Hedonist and Wasteful Scrooge. In their narratives, young people also analyse the usefulness - or uselessness - of their decisions on consumption, as well as develop themselves into controlling and sensible consumers. This kind of virtuous consumer allows him/herself the joy and the gratification of consumption, as long as these are "kept in check". One's view of expenditure and consumption is not permanent. Consumerism may alter with time. A wastrel may grow up to be a young person in control of their desires, or a thrifty child may awaken to the pleasures of consumption in their teens. Consumerism may also be polyphonic: it may simultaneously - and even uncomplicatedly - be constructed upon the discourses of wastefulness, prudence, gratification and green consumerism. Young people allow for gratification to form a part of green consumerism, too: it is not simply restrictive self-denial. They also see many hurdles in the way of green consumerism, such as the elevated price of ecological products, and the difficulties of green consumer practices. The stories also show the gender division in green consumerism. For young men, ecological considerations offer elements for the construction of consumerism only on the very rare occasion, whereas striving for day-to-day green practices is typical for young women.