The gender wage gap: what has happened between 1973 and 1990 in Australia?

The current study examines the change in the gender wage gap in Australia over the period 1973 to 1990. The Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1991) decomposition is used in order to evaluate the role and relative contribution of changes in observed and unobserved skills and their prices. The sensitivity of conclusions to the measure of labour market experience and industry and occupation structure are also examined. The analysis concludes that gender-specific effects are dominant in male-female wage convergence although wage-structure effects also play a minor role.

Gender differences in rumination : a meta-analysis

Starting in adolescence and continuing through adulthood, women are twice as likely as men to experience depression. According to the response styles theory (RST), gender differences in depression result, in part, from women's tendency to ruminate more than men. A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate gender differences in rumination in adults (k = 59; N = 14,321); additionally, an analysis of subtypes of rumination - brooding and reflection - was conducted (k = 23). Fixed effects analyses indicated that women scored higher than men in rumination (d = .24, p < .01, SEd = .02), brooding (d = .19, p < .01, SEd = .03) and reflection (d = .17, p < .01, SEd = .03); there was no evidence of heterogeneity or publication bias across studies for these effect sizes. Although statistically significant, the effect sizes for gender differences in rumination were small in magnitude. Results are discussed with respect to the RST and gender differences in depression

A social justice framework for safeguarding student learning engagement

The set of social justice principles and the Social Justice Framework (SJF), developed as resources for the sector as part of an Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching project, adopt a recognitive approach to social justice and emphasise full participation and contribution within democratic society (Gale, 2000; Gale & Densmore, 2000). The SJF is contained within the major deliverable of the project, which is A Good Practice Guide for Safeguarding Student Learning Engagement (Nelson & Creagh, 2013) and is focused on good practice for activities that monitor student learning engagement and identify students at risk of disengaging in their first year. Examination of the social justice literature and its application to the higher education sector produced a set of five principles: Self-determination, Rights, Access, Equity and Participation. Each principle was defined and elucidated by a rationale and implications for practice, thus completing the SJF. The framework: reflects the notions of equity and social justice; provides a strategic approach for safeguarding engagement activities; and is supported by a suite of resources for practice and practitioners. The aim of this poster session is to engage in conversations about the SJF and how it might be applied to other types of student engagement activities critical to the first year of university life, such as orientation and transition programs, teamwork activities, peer programs and other academic support initiatives.

Retaining female postgraduates in academia : the role of gender and prospective parenthood

Women remain under-represented in almost all academic levels at universities internationally, and previous evidence has suggested that women move out of the university system in increasing numbers as they progress from postgraduate study to an academic career. The current study aimed to explore the role of gender in the reports of study experiences and future career plans of Australian postgraduate research students (n = 249). Questionnaire data indicated women were significantly less likely than men to rate an academic career as appealing. In particular, female postgraduate students without dependent children were least likely to want to pursue an academic career. On the basis of qualitative analysis, we attribute this finding, at least in part, to a perceived incompatibility between motherhood and an academic career and discuss the implications for gender equity in higher education.

Legal activism for ensuring environmental justice

This article reviews some of the roles environmental lawyers have played in ensuring environmental justice in Bangladesh. It leans on law and social movement theories to explicate the choice (and ensuing success) of litigation as a movement strategy in Bangladesh. The activists successfully moved the courts to read the right to a decent environment into the fundamental right to life, and this has had the far-reaching effect of constituting a basis for standing for the activists and other civil society organisations. The activists have also sought to introduce emerging international law principles into the jurisprudence of the courts. These achievements notwithstanding, the paper notes that litigation is not a sustainable way to institute enduring environmental protection in any jurisdiction and recommends the utilisation of the reputation and recognition gained through litigation to deploy or encourage more sustainable strategies.

A gender comparison of food shopper typologies

This research segments male and female food shoppers based on store and product attribute evaluations, enjoyment, planning, and shopping responsibility. A rich profile for each segment is developed from a sample of 580 primary food shoppers. Gender comparisons are operationalized and these developed food shopper typologies are contrasted against earlier works. Factor analysis, cluster analysis, and ANOVA were employed to develop specific segments of shoppers. This is the first study to identify specific groups of male food shoppers and contrast these to traditional female shoppers and earlier typographical works. The research provides the basis for further cross-cultural, cross-contextual comparative studies.

Does board gender diversity have a financial impact? Evidence using stock portfolio performance.

There is growing regulatory pressure on firms worldwide to address the under-representation of women in senior positions. Regulators have taken a variety of approaches to the issue. We investigate a jurisdiction that has issued recommendations and disclosure requirements, rather than implementing quotas. Much of the rhetoric surrounding gender diversity centres on whether diversity has a financial impact. In this paper we take an aggregate (market-level) approach and compare the performance of portfolios of firms with gender diverse boards to those without. We also investigate whether having multiple women on the board is linked to performance, and if there is a within-industry effect. Overall, we do not find evidence of an association between diversity and performance. We find some weak evidence of a negative correlation between having multiple women on the board and performance, but that in some industries diversity is positively correlated with performance.

Living with the Legacy of Conquest and Culture : Social Justice Leadership in Education and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia and America

Indigenous peoples have survived the most inhumane acts and violations against them. Despite acts of genocide, Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans have survived. The impact of the past 500 years cannot be separated from understandings of education for Native Americans in the same way that the impact of the past 220 years cannot be separated from the understandings of Australian Aboriginal people’s experiences of education. This chapter is about comparisons in Aboriginal and Native American communities and their collision with the dominant, white European settlers who came to Australia and America. Chomsky (Intervention in Vietnam and Central America: parallels and differences. In: Peck J (ed) The Chomsky Reader. Pantheon Books, New York, p 315, 1987) once remarked that if one took two historical events and compared them for similarities and differences, you would find both. The real test was whether on the similarities they were significant. The position of the coauthors of this chapter is in the affirmative and we take this occasion to lay them out for analysis and review. The chapter begins with a discussion of the historical legacy of oppression and colonization impacting upon Indigenous peoples in Australia and in the United States, followed by a discussion of the plight of Indigenous children in a specific State in America. Through the lens of social justice, we examine those issues and attitudes that continue to subjugate these same peoples in the economic and educational systems of both nations. The final part of the chapter identifies some implications for school leadership.

Gender-based undervaluation and the equal remuneration powers of Fair Work Australia

We investigate gender-based wage undervaluation in light of FairWork Australia’s major recent decision for social and community service workers. Using regression methods, we demonstrate that wages for employees in female-dominated occupations are significantly lower than for comparable employees in male-dominated and integrated occupations. This undervaluation is present for both male and female employees, and persists after controlling for industry of employment. We then estimate the undervaluation within industry and juxtapose the results with evidence on the industry distribution of award reliance, a proxy for Fair Work Australia’s equal remuneration powers. There is not a strong relationship within industries between the extent of gender-based undervaluation and award reliance. This suggests that ‘equal remuneration for work of equal or comparable value’ is unlikely to be achieved universally by Fair Work Australia without substantial spillovers between awards and non-award agreements.

Female concentration and the gender wage differential in the United Kingdom

The paper utilizes the methodology proposed by Johnson and Solon (American Economic Review, 76 (5), 1117-1125, 1986) to examine the impact of job segregation on the gender wage gap in the UK in 1991. The results suggest that despite implementation of the UK 1983 Equal Pay Amendment there remains clear evidence that male/female workers in female dominated jobs continue to earn less for work of ‘similar worth’ than their counterparts in male dominated jobs within the same firm. This conclusion is insensitive to whether one adopts an occupation or firm based measure of gender concentration.

Convergence in the gender wage gap in Australia over the 1980s : identifying the role of counteracting forces via the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce decomposition

The paper utilises the Juhn Murphy and Pierce (1991) decomposition to shed light on the pattern of slow male-female wage convergance in Australia over the 1980s. The analysis allows one to distinguish between the role of wage structure and genderspecific effects. The central question addressed is whether rising wage inequality counteracted the forces of increased female investment in labour market skills, i.e. education and experience. The conclusion is that in contrast to the US and the UK, Australian women do not appear to have been swimming against a tide of adverse wage structure changes.

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.

Justice for pollution-victims in China and Australia

The concept of environmental justice is well developed in North America, but is still at the evolutionary stage in most other jurisdictions around the globe. This paper seeks to explore two jurisdictions where incidents of environmental justice are likely to be seen in the future as a result of manufacturing and mining practices. The discussion will centre upon avenues to environmental justice for both private citizens and the public at large. The first jurisdiction considered is China, where environmental liability claims brought by Chinese citizens have increased at an annual average of 25% (Yang 2011). Manufacturing is at the core of the Chinese economy and is responsible for some of the unprecedented economic growth in the region. Less discussed are the industry impacts on water and air pollution levels and the associated implications of these pollutants on local communities. China introduced the Tort Liability Law (TLL) in 2010, which may provide avenues to justice for private citizens. The other jurisdiction considered by the paper is Australia, where the mining boom has buffered the Australian economy from the global financial crisis. There is some limited case law in Australia where private citizens have made a claim in toxic torts; however the framework is underdeveloped in terms of the significant risks facing indigenous and local communities in mining areas and also by comparison to the developments of the TLL framework in China. This paper traces the regulatory responses to the affects of major industries on communities in China and Australia. From this it examines the need for environmental justice avenues that align with rule of law principles.

Prevalence and characteristics of Indigenous drink-driving convictions in Queensland, Australia

Alcohol-involved accidents are one of the leading contributors towards high injury rates among Indigenous Australians. However, there is limited information available to inform existing policies to change current rates. The study aims to provide information about the prevalence and the characteristics of such behaviour. Drink driving convictions from 2006-2010 were extracted from the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General database. Convictions were regrouped by gender, age, Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia classification (using court location) and sentence severity. A number of cross tabulations were carried out to identify relationships between variables. Standardised adjusted residuals were calculated for each cell in order to determine cell differences that contributed to the chi-square test results. Analysis revealed there were 9,323 convictions, of which the majority were for offences by males (77.5%). In relation to age, 52.6% of the convictions were of persons under 25 years of age. Age was significantly different across the five regions for males only (χ2=90.8, p<0.001), with a larger number of convictions in the ‘very remote’ region of persons over 40+ years of age. Increased remoteness was linked with high range BAC convictions for both males (χ2=168.4, p<0.001) and females (χ2=22.5, p=0.004). Monetary penalties were the primary sentence received for both males and females in all regions. The findings identify the Indigenous drink driving conviction rate to be 6 times that of the general Queensland rate and indicate that a multipronged approach is needed, with tailored strategies for remote offenders, young adults and offenders with alcohol misuse and dependency issues. Further attention is warranted in this area of road safety.

The employment effects of gender discrimination in Australia 1994-95

Interpreting the unexplained component of the gender wage gap as indicative of discrimination, the empirical literature to date has tended to ignore the potential impact wage discrimination may have on employment. Clearly, employment effects will arise if discrimination lowers the female offered wage and the labour supply curve is upward sloping. The empirical analysis employs the ABS Income Distribution Survey 1994–95 and finds evidence of both wage and associated employment effects. The analysis is replicated for the earlier period 1989–90. A comparison across time is of interest given the substantial deregulation of the Australian labour market over the period.