Projections of the future path of the gender wage gap in Great Britain

Purpose – The paper attempts to project the future trend of the gender wage gap in Great Britain up to 2031. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical analysis utilises the British Household Panel Study Wave F together with Office for National Statistics (ONS) demographic projections. The methodology combines the ONS projections with assumptions relating to the evolution of educational attainment in order to project the future distribution of human capital skills and consequently the future size of the gender wage gap. Findings – The analysis suggests that gender wage convergence will be slow, with little female progress by 2031 unless there is a large rise in returns to female experience. Originality/value – The paper has projected the pattern of male and female skill acquisition together with the associated trend in wages up to 2031.

Front-line workers as intermediaries : the changing landscape of disability and employment services in Australia

Recent welfare reform in Australia has been constructed around the now-familiar principle of paid work and willingness to work as the fundamental marker of social citizenship. Beginning with the long-term unemployed in Australia in the mid 1990s, the scope of welfare reform has now extended to include people with a disability – which is a category of income support that has been growing in Australia. From the national government’s point of view this growth is a financial concern as it seeks to move as many people as possible into paid work to support the costs of an ageing population (DEWR, 2005). In doing so, the government has changed the meaning of disability in terms of eligibility for financial support from the state, and at the same time redefined the role of people with a disability with regard to work, and the role of the state with regard to the disabled. This has been a matter of some political contention in Australia.

The role of the non-government organisation (NGO) in practicing editorial photography in a globalised media environment

The news media industry has changed dramatically in the last 10 to 20 years into a global business with ever increasing attention being devoted to entertainment and celebrity. There is also a growing reliance on images produced by citizens (citizen photojournalism) by media outlets and publishers. It is widely acknowledged this has shrunk publication opportunities for professional photographers undertaking editorial projects. As a result, photographers are increasingly relying on non-government organisations (NGOs) to gain access to photographing issues and events in developing countries and to expand their economic and portfolio opportunities. This increase of photographers working for and alongside NGOs has given rise to a new genre of editorial photography I call NGO Reportage. By way of a case study, an exploration of this new genre reveals important issues for photographers working alongside NGO’s and examines the constructed narratives of images contained within these emerging practices.

Bike share's impact on car use : evidence from the United States, Great Britain, and Australia

There are currently more than 400 cities operating bike share programs. Purported benefits of bike share programs include flexible mobility, physical activity, reduced congestion, emissions and fuel use. Implicit or explicit in the calculation of program benefits are assumptions regarding the modes of travel replaced by bike share journeys. This paper examines the degree to which car trips are replaced by bike share, through an examination of survey and trip data from bike share programs in Melbourne, Brisbane, Washing, D.C., London, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. A secondary and unique component of this analysis examines motor vehicle support services required for bike share fleet rebalancing and maintenance. These two components are then combined to estimate bike share’s overall contribution to changes in vehicle kilometres traveled. The results indicate that the estimated mean reduction in car use due to bike share is at least twice the distance covered by operator support vehicles, with the exception of London, in which the relationship is reversed, largely due to a low car mode substitution rate. As bike share programs mature, evaluation of their effectiveness in reducing car use may become increasingly important. This paper reveals that by increasing the convenience of bike share relative to car use and by improving perceptions of safety, the capacity of bike share programs to reduce vehicle trips and yield overall net benefits will be enhanced. Researchers can adapt the analytical approach proposed in this paper to assist in the evaluation of current and future bike share programs.

Darling and the Great Anabranch : Talking fish - making connections with the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin

The Lower Darling River and Great Darling Anabranch are located in south west New South Wales. Muddy waters meander over the grey soil floodplains past red dunes, spiky saltbush and gnarled red gums. These are the traditional lands of the Paakintji people. But the land and the river are no longer what the Paakintji once knew and fished...

Literary prosumers : young people’s reading and writing in a new media landscape

The production of culture is today a matter of ‘user generated content’ and young people are vital participants as ‘prosumers’, i.e. both producers and consumers, of cultural products. Among other things, they are busy creating fan works (stories, pictures, films) based on already published material. Using the genre fan fiction as a point of departure, this article explores the drivers behind net communities organised around fan culture and argues that fan fiction sites can in many aspects be regarded as informal learning settings. By turning to the rhetoric principle of imitatio, the article shows how in the collective interactive processes between readers and writers such fans develop literacies and construct gendered identities.

The Use of Ecological Design to Achieve Sustainable Development in Queensland, Australia

This series of technical papers arose out of the action by a private entrepreneur to initiate a process beyond mere regulatory compliance in order to achieve best environmental practice at proposed large new visitor gateways to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Because of the complexity of issues involved at such urbanized downstream sites, the range of topics covered is wide – though still only those considered at this juncture to be of management priority. Included on this platform is one introductory paper reviewing the history of environmental management in the field in Queensland, and three papers which seek to appreciate the main techniques by which government contributes to the solutions viz. through the national park, threatened species list, and environmental impact assessment. The history paper was designed to allow the present series to be considered in broad context as well as performance to date. The work emphasizes that much of the fertile land that must be sustained nowadays lies in the province of the private sector, and that the initiative to create any new cost-effective paradigm in ecologically-sustainable practices lies mostly in their hands. In all instances, this strategic approach to large-scale property planning is through ecological design – using field case studies around the immediate biophysical catchment of the development, with attendant focus on the associated legal catchment (the actual development site) and the social catchment (the effective land managers). The first of these has given rise to a document termed a Regional Landscape Strategy, its implementation planned in concert with an Environmental Impact Assessment of the site and with a Strategic Regional Initiative (still being tested in the field) for community engagement. The first document takes into account the aspirations of government as expressed in its broad-scale regional plans.

Branding Melbourne : re-imagining the landscape through Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap (2008)

In this paper I am focusing on one aspect of what Henri Lefebvre first termed the espace vecu “the fully lived space” (Soja 1999); and that aspect of space which exists within the geographical imagination. Building upon Lefebvre’s ideas Edward Soja acknowledges that “lived cities are never completely knowable” (1999) although in this paper I argue that often a fictional city is much more complex and diverse, much more revealing of the practices of everyday life than the homogenised concept often put forward in public discourses. Recent Melbourne fiction opens out this complexity, destabilizing public policy-making to reveal a socially diverse suburban landscape occupying both planned and organic spaces. The text that will be analysed in relation to this year’s conference theme The Geographical Imagination is a fictional text situated in Melbourne called The Slap that was written by Christos Tsiolkas in 2008.

Genuine community engagement in remote dryland regions : natural resource management in Lake Eyre Basin

Remote dryland regions are characterised by sparse populations and socially marginalised voices which pose particular challenges to natural resource management. This paper considers the issue of how to achieve community engagement in regions with these characteristics. In doing so, the paper contributes to an expanding international research agenda focusing on the distinct characteristics of arid and semi-arid regions under the heading of 'dryland syndrome'. The paper draws on government liaison officer and local community perspectives of successful engagement in the case-study region of Lake Eyre Basin, Australia. The results demonstrate that widely recognised characteristics of successful engagement are required but insufficient for genuine engagement in remote dryland regions. In addition to building trust through community ownership, being inclusive, effective communication, and adequate resources, genuine community engagement in drylands also requires respecting the extreme conditions and extraordinary variability of these areas. Residents of dryland regions seek genuine engagement yet engage opportunistically when seasons are conducive and when tangible outcomes are visible. © 2011 The Authors. Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers.

Tools for successful NRM in the Lake Eyre Basin : achieving effective engagement

This chapter was developed as part of the ‘People, communities and economies of the Lake Eyre Basin’ project. It has been written for communities, government agencies and interface organisations involved in natural resource management (NRM) in the Lake Eyre Basin (LEB). Its purpose is to identify the key factors for successful community engagement processes relevant to the LEB and present tools and principles for successful engagement processes. The term ‘interface organisation’ is used here to refer to the diverse range of local and regional organisations (such as Catchment Committees or NRM Regional Bodies) that serve as linkages, or translators, between local communities and broader Australian and State Governments. The importance of fostering and harnessing effective processes of community engagement has been identified as crucial to building a prosperous future for rural and remote regions in Australia. The chapter presents an overview of the literature on successful community engagement processes for NRM, as well as an overview of the current NRM arrangements in the LEB. The main part of the chapter presents findings of the series of interviews conducted with the government liaison officers representing both state and federal organisations who are responsible for coordinating and facilitating regional NRM in the LEB, and with the members of communities of the LEB.

The role of Non-Government Organisations (NGOS) in practising editorial photography in a globalised media environment

The news media industry has changed dramatically into a global business with ever-increasing attention being devoted to entertainment and celebrity across the last 10–20 years. There has also been a growing reliance on images produced by citizens (citizen photojournalism), by media outlets and publishers. It is widely acknowledged that in tandem these changes have shrunk publication opportunities for professional photographers undertaking editorial projects. As a result, photographers are increasingly relying on non-government organisations (NGOs) to gain access to photographing issues and events in developing countries and to expand their economic and portfolio opportunities. This increase in photographers working for and alongside NGOs has given rise to a new genre of editorial photography which I call NGO Reportage. By way of a case study, an exploration of this new genre reveals important issues for photographers working with NGOs and examines the constructed narratives of images contained within these emerging practices.

Landscape ecology of the lesser grain borer, Rhyzopertha dominica

The Lesser Grain Borer is a major pest of stored grain with a global distribution. This project has, for the first time recorded this pest throughout broad spatial areas, tens of kilometres from grain production or storage. Statistical analysis revealed that different factors such as ambient temperature and the availability of food resources affect R. dominica differently between different habitats. This suggests that, contrary to the prevailing view, this pest is not solely dependent on stored wheat and can continue to persist throughout a range of habitats. These findings have important management implications for Australia's wheat industry.

Ecological consequences of fragmentation and deforestation in an urban landscape : a case study

Landscape change is an ongoing process even within established urban landscapes. Yet, analyses of fragmentation and deforestation have focused primarily on the conversion of non-urban to urban landscapes in rural landscapes and ignored urban landscapes. To determine the ecological effects of continued urbanization in urban landscapes, tree-covered patches were mapped in the Gwynns Falls watershed (17158.6 ha) in Maryland for 1994 and 1999 to document fragmentation, deforestation, and reforestation. The watershed was divided into lower (urban core), middle (older suburbs), and upper (recent suburbs) subsections. Over the entire watershed a net of 264.5 of 4855.5 ha of tree-covered patches were converted to urban land use-125 new tree-covered patches were added through fragmentation, 4 were added through reforestation, 43 were lost through deforestation, and 7 were combined with an adjacent patch. In addition, 180 patches were reduced in size. In the urban core, deforestation continued with conversion to commercial land use. Because of the lack of vegetation, commercial land uses are problematic for both species conservation and derived ecosystem benefits. In the lower subsection, shape complexity increased for tree-covered patches less than 10 ha. Changes in shape resulted from canopy expansion, planted materials, and reforestation of vacant sites. In the middle and upper subsections, the shape index value for tree-covered patches decreased, indicating simplification. Density analyses of the subsections showed no change with respect to patch densities but pointed out the importance of small patches (≤5 ha) as "stepping stone" to link large patches (e. g., ≥100 ha). Using an urban forest effect model, we estimated, for the entire watershed, total carbon loss and pollution removal, from 1994 to 1999, to be 14,235,889.2 kg and 13,011.4 kg, respectively due to urban land-use conversions.

Medium and mode : relationships between visual experience and perception in an installation arts practice

Working primarily within the natural landscape, this practice-led research project explored connections between the artist's visual and perceptual experience of a journey or place while simultaneously emphasizing the capacity for digital media to create a perceptual dissonance. By exploring concepts of time, viewpoint, duration of sequences and the manipulation of traditional constructs of stop-frame animation, the practical work created a cognitive awareness of the elements of the journey through optical sensations. The work allowed an opportunity to reflect on the nature of visual experience and its mediation through images. The project recontextualized the selected mediums of still photography, animation and projection within contemporary display modes of multiple screen installations by analysing relationships between the experienced and the perceived. The resulting works added to current discourse on the interstices between still and moving imagery in a digital world.