Bibliography: leaves 540-587.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 241-281.

Abstract not available

Feminist and social historians have long been interested in that particularly female ability to become pregnant and bear children. A significant body of historiography has challenged the notion that pregnancy and childbirth considered to be the acceptable and 'appropriate' roles for women for most of the twentieth century in Australia - have always been welcomed, rewarding and always fulfilling events in women's lives. Several historians have also begun the process of enlarging our knowledge of the changing cultural attitudes towards bereavement in Australia and the eschewing of the public expression of sorrow following the two World Wars; a significant contribution to scholarship which underscores the changing attitudes towards perinatal loss. It is estimated that one in four women lose a pregnancy to miscarriage, and two in one hundred late pregnancies result in stillbirth in contemporary Australia. Miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death are today considered by psychologists and social workers, amongst others, as potentially significant events in many women's lives, yet have received little or passing attention in historical scholarship concerned with pregnancy and motherhood. As such, this study focuses on pregnancy loss: the meaning it has been given by various groups at different times in Australia's past, and how some Australian women have made sense of their own experience of miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death within particular social and historical contexts. Pregnancy loss has been understood in a range of ways by different groups over the past 100 years. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when alarm was mounting over the declining birth rate, pregnancy loss was termed 'foetal wastage' by eugenicists and medical practitioners, and was seen in abstract terms as the loss of necessary future Australian citizens. By the 1970s, however, with the advent of support groups such as SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Support) miscarriage and stillbirth were increasingly seen as the devastating loss of an individual baby, while the mother was seen as someone in need of emotional and other support. With the advent of new prenatal screening technologies in the late twentieth century, there has been a return of the idea of maternal responsibility for producing a 'successful' outcome. This project seeks to critically examines the wide range of socially constructed meanings of pregnancy loss and interrogate the arguments of those groups, such as the medical profession, religious and support groups, participating in these constructions. It will build on existing histories of motherhood, childbirth and pregnancy in Australia and, therefore, also the history of Australian women.

This collaborative research is an account of the recent lived experience of twelve women who bring about transformations in their own workplaces. The work integrates feminist theory with the social ecology focus of studying interactions between people and their environments. The study is multidisciplinary including psychological as well as social aspects and applies critical social research to workplace situations. The research group informed each other primarily by stories which narrated: social and family context; work situations; particular situations and specific strategies. Reflexive and archetypal meanings emerged from recounting ancient myths to help understand complex and difficult work structures which constrain the participants' creativity. This inquiry is a fresh approach to a range of workplace problems by engaging many women’s preferred working styles and applying this creative response: pro-active strategies which are demonstrated, are indeed, highly effective. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)(Social Ecology)

This thesis investigates how sports organisations and discourses have impacted on the sports participation of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in Australia. A series of national participation studies have documented that women from minority ethnic backgrounds have significantly lower participation rates in sports and physical activity than Anglo-Australian women. However, the explanations and dimensions of this difference have not been examined in previous research. The experiences of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are used in this thesis to explore sports discourses and organisation and the embodiments of their interrelationship. The present research proposes that sports organisations and discourses within Australia have historically served to marginalise women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The arguments for this position are explored using a local narrative which details the situated nature of women????s experiences of sports. These experiences are located within a historical context that traces migration policies, the growth and development of sports and women????s social relations since white settlement of Australia. It is argued that contemporary sports discourses and organisation are inextricably tied to Australia????s colonial and imperialist past. Theories of ethnicity, gender and sports are analysed. The theoretical perspective taken in this thesis builds on feminist ideologies and ethnicity studies. Empirical analysis is undertaken using gender relations to situate sport as a site of cultural struggles best understood through investigations of history and diversity. Aspects of power, control and influence are central to this thesis. The empirical component of this thesis uses secondary data sources, surveys and interviews to investigate the research proposition. This is achieved on two levels. The first level interrogates existing data to create a macro level analysis of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in sports. A survey of 972 schoolgirls was undertaken to collect information on sports participation and attitudes to sports. This was followed by 30 interviews with women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds that explored individual sports experiences and perspectives on sports. The second level of investigation employed the case study of netball to examine the research question as it related to a specific sports organisation. The case study component of the research involved document and archival analysis, a survey of 372 netball players and interviews with 18 women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and former and current netball administrators. The thesis analyses the empirical data as it relates to the organisation and discourse of sports in Australia. The principal conclusion reached is that sports organisation and discourses are located within a societal power structure that places women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds on its margins. Sports participation is predicated on conformity to existing cultural practices and expectations and it does little to facilitate cultural diversity. The women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who participated in the research did not perceive sports as particularly inclusive of gender and culture. The examination of netball demonstrated that netball has not been concerned with ????other???? women, rather it has focussed its efforts on appealing to ????mainstream???? women. While netball has not explicitly excluded the involvement of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, neither has it actively encouraged cultural diversity. This thesis makes a contribution to knowledge in the field of sports studies with its empirical research and through the ensuing development of a framework for locating the implications of inclusion or exclusion in sports organisations and discourses. This understanding can be used to assess and inform future sports policy development and practice. Principally, the thesis seeks to acknowledge and legitimise the sports experiences of women from diverse backgrounds and in doing so provides insights into a better theoretical understanding about the nexus of gender, ethnicity and sports.

This thesis investigates how sports organisations and discourses have impacted on the sports participation of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in Australia. A series of national participation studies have documented that women from minority ethnic backgrounds have significantly lower participation rates in sports and physical activity than Anglo-Australian women. However, the explanations and dimensions of this difference have not been examined in previous research. The experiences of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are used in this thesis to explore sports discourses and organisation and the embodiments of their interrelationship. The present research proposes that sports organisations and discourses within Australia have historically served to marginalise women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The arguments for this position are explored using a local narrative which details the situated nature of women????s experiences of sports. These experiences are located within a historical context that traces migration policies, the growth and development of sports and women????s social relations since white settlement of Australia. It is argued that contemporary sports discourses and organisation are inextricably tied to Australia????s colonial and imperialist past. Theories of ethnicity, gender and sports are analysed. The theoretical perspective taken in this thesis builds on feminist ideologies and ethnicity studies. Empirical analysis is undertaken using gender relations to situate sport as a site of cultural struggles best understood through investigations of history and diversity. Aspects of power, control and influence are central to this thesis. The empirical component of this thesis uses secondary data sources, surveys and interviews to investigate the research proposition. This is achieved on two levels. The first level interrogates existing data to create a macro level analysis of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in sports. A survey of 972 schoolgirls was undertaken to collect information on sports participation and attitudes to sports. This was followed by 30 interviews with women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds that explored individual sports experiences and perspectives on sports. The second level of investigation employed the case study of netball to examine the research question as it related to a specific sports organisation. The case study component of the research involved document and archival analysis, a survey of 372 netball players and interviews with 18 women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and former and current netball administrators. The thesis analyses the empirical data as it relates to the organisation and discourse of sports in Australia. The principal conclusion reached is that sports organisation and discourses are located within a societal power structure that places women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds on its margins. Sports participation is predicated on conformity to existing cultural practices and expectations and it does little to facilitate cultural diversity. The women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who participated in the research did not perceive sports as particularly inclusive of gender and culture. The examination of netball demonstrated that netball has not been concerned with ????other???? women, rather it has focussed its efforts on appealing to ????mainstream???? women. While netball has not explicitly excluded the involvement of women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, neither has it actively encouraged cultural diversity. This thesis makes a contribution to knowledge in the field of sports studies with its empirical research and through the ensuing development of a framework for locating the implications of inclusion or exclusion in sports organisations and discourses. This understanding can be used to assess and inform future sports policy development and practice. Principally, the thesis seeks to acknowledge and legitimise the sports experiences of women from diverse backgrounds and in doing so provides insights into a better theoretical understanding about the nexus of gender, ethnicity and sports.

This is an interdisciplinary thesis in women's and gender studies combining legal analysis with archival research. It traverses Australian women's struggle for equal pay and pay equity from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginnings of the twenty-first. It recounts and analyses women's activism through campaigns targeting state and federal politicians, prime ministers, premiers and state and federal ministers for labour and industrial relations; engagement in the industrial arena; and through women's organisations and work with the trade union movement. The thesis analyses achievements and setbacks through the federal industrial arena, and references, too, major state industrial cases and legislation. It analyses women's intervention and impact in the Equal Pay, Minimum Wage, Basic Wage and National Wage Cases. Through archives, original letters, articles, pamphlets, books, interviews and other sources, the thesis recounts women's agreements and disagreements on how the struggle would be won, and the solid campaigning in which women engaged from the late years of the nineteenth century, through every decade of the twentieth, and in the first years of the first decade of the twenty-first century. It covers a span of over one hundred years, during which the claim was characterised as one for equal pay, the rate for the job and, more recently, pay equity. Looking at the past and the present, the thesis concludes that women's direct engagement with the industrial system and parallel working within women's organisations and trade unions has been central to gains in equal pay and pay equity. Apart from women's and men's earnings in Scandinavia, relativities between women's and men's wages and salaries in Australia have been -- despite the disparity - the most approximate of all OECD countries. The thesis posits that it is only with a return to centralised wage fixing, with women's organisations intervening and bringing their own experts to educate industrial commissions, employers and unions, that the value of women's work will be recognised as equal to the value of men's work, and equal pay, the rate for the job, or pay equity will be achieved.

Bibliography: leaves 540-587 / xxii, 587 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, 1988

"July 24, 2004" / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 297-319) / xix, 319 leaves : ill. (some col.), maps ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies, 2004