[Truncated abstract] This thesis examines the health outcomes of women exposed to blue asbestos at Wittenoom, Western Australia. Blue asbestos was mined and milled from 1943 to 1966 by the Australian Blue Asbestos Company (ABA) at Wittenoom, 1,600km from Perth in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. The original work for this thesis is presented in six manuscripts, some of which have been published in peer-reviewed Journals. The following aims have been investigated. 1. (a) To compare the all-cause mortality rates of women who lived at Wittenoom compared with all-cause mortality rates of the Western Australian female population (b) To assess the exposure-response relationship between asbestos and mortality in women. 2. (a) To compare the incidence rates of common cancers in women who lived at Wittenoom, compared with the incidence rates of these cancers in the Western Australian female population. (b) To assess the exposure-response relationship between asbestos and cancer incidence at various sites in women. 3. (a) To determine if reproductive cancers (ovarian, uterine cervical and corpus and breast) and gestational trophoblastic diseases are associated with asbestos exposure. v (b) To determine if ovarian cancer has been misclassified as malignant peritoneal mesothelioma or vice versa. (c) To determine if colon cancer has been misclassified as malignant peritoneal mesothelioma or vice versa. (d) To assess the exposure-response relationship between asbestos and reproductive cancer incidence. 4. To assess the susceptibility of women to asbestos exposure in comparison with men with similar exposure histories. 5. To predict the future mortality from malignant mesothelioma among women who lived at Wittenoom. '...' The Wittenoom crocidolite industry has had a damaging impact upon the health of the women workers and residents who lived there. Wittenoom women are more likely to die from malignant mesothelioma and lung cancer, all cancers and all causes than women in the Western Australian population. This brief period of crocidolite mining in Western Australia's history will continue to exert a detrimental impact upon the future of the women who lived there, with another 66 to 87 mesotheliomas predicted to occur to the end of 2030.

No description available.

This study focuses on the experiences of working-class women spanning the years from 1888 to 1914 - a period of significant economic growth and socio-political change in Victoria. The drift of population into the urban centres after the goldrush marked the beginning of a rapid and continual urban expansion in Melbourne as the city’s industrial and commercial sectors grew and diversified. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the increasing population provided a larger workforce which also represented a growing consumer market. The rise of the Victorian manufacturing industries in this period also saw the introduction of the modern factory system. With the increasing demand for unskilled labour in factories, it was not only men who entered this new factory workforce. Young women and older children were, for the first time, drawn in appreciable numbers into the industrial workforce as employers keenly sought their services as unskilled and cheap workers. Women were concentrated in specific areas of the labour market, such as the clothing, boot, food and drink industries, which became strictly areas of “women’s work”. In the early twentieth century, the rigid sexual demarcation of work was represented by gender-differentiated wages and employment provisions within industrial awards.

My critical essay uses Foucault???s theory of discursive formation to chart the emergence of the figure of the single modern woman as she is created by the various discourses surrounding her. It argues that representations of the single modern woman continue a tradition of perceiving the female body as a source of social anxiety. The project explores ???chick-lit??? as a site within the discursive formation from which the single modern woman emerges as a paradoxical figure; the paradoxes fundamentally linked to her sexuality. This essay, then, essentially seeks to investigate representations of female sexuality within chick-lit, exposing for scrutiny the paradoxes inherent in and around the figure of the single modern woman. My fictional piece is a work of erotica. It is divided into four sections: The Reader, The Writer, The Muse and The Critic. Essentially it explores the relationships between female sexuality and literature; between female sexuality and feminist, post-feminist and patriarchal values and between literature and issues of truth, perspective and representation. The two works complement each other to illuminate the paradox of female sexuality: one from a theoretical perspective and the other from a fictional perspective. The critical work focuses on female sexuality and its relationship to, and development within, the current social context. Chick-lit, as a new and immensely popular genre of fiction which holistically explores the lives of single modern women was useful for examining the relationship between the sexual persona of the single modern woman and society. The fiction is concerned with a narrower focus: specifically the sexual life of the single modern woman. Through the creative process, it became apparent that working within the genre of ???erotica??? would be not only more useful than working within chick-lit, but more powerful in exploring the themes I was interested in. The creative work draws on numerous points of interest raised in the critical work from, for example, the grander notions of the relationship between object and discourse ??? in this case female sexuality and literature ??? and the female body as a source of social fascination and anxiety to finer observations such as what it means to have sex ???like a man.??? In essence, the creative work seeks to examine the many faces of the single modern woman as a sexual being and to illuminate, on an intimate level, the many conflicts between and surrounding those faces and to suggest that while paradox remains in female sexual ideology, the single modern woman will remain suspended in a kind of sexual paralysis.

My critical essay uses Foucault???s theory of discursive formation to chart the emergence of the figure of the single modern woman as she is created by the various discourses surrounding her. It argues that representations of the single modern woman continue a tradition of perceiving the female body as a source of social anxiety. The project explores ???chick-lit??? as a site within the discursive formation from which the single modern woman emerges as a paradoxical figure; the paradoxes fundamentally linked to her sexuality. This essay, then, essentially seeks to investigate representations of female sexuality within chick-lit, exposing for scrutiny the paradoxes inherent in and around the figure of the single modern woman. My fictional piece is a work of erotica. It is divided into four sections: The Reader, The Writer, The Muse and The Critic. Essentially it explores the relationships between female sexuality and literature; between female sexuality and feminist, post-feminist and patriarchal values and between literature and issues of truth, perspective and representation. The two works complement each other to illuminate the paradox of female sexuality: one from a theoretical perspective and the other from a fictional perspective. The critical work focuses on female sexuality and its relationship to, and development within, the current social context. Chick-lit, as a new and immensely popular genre of fiction which holistically explores the lives of single modern women was useful for examining the relationship between the sexual persona of the single modern woman and society. The fiction is concerned with a narrower focus: specifically the sexual life of the single modern woman. Through the creative process, it became apparent that working within the genre of ???erotica??? would be not only more useful than working within chick-lit, but more powerful in exploring the themes I was interested in. The creative work draws on numerous points of interest raised in the critical work from, for example, the grander notions of the relationship between object and discourse ??? in this case female sexuality and literature ??? and the female body as a source of social fascination and anxiety to finer observations such as what it means to have sex ???like a man.??? In essence, the creative work seeks to examine the many faces of the single modern woman as a sexual being and to illuminate, on an intimate level, the many conflicts between and surrounding those faces and to suggest that while paradox remains in female sexual ideology, the single modern woman will remain suspended in a kind of sexual paralysis.

This thesis argues that through bringing together two branches of inquiry???the literary work of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Eleanor Dark and socio-feminist theory on health, contagion and the female body???the discursive body of the mother-figure in their novels serves as a trope through which otherwise unspoken tensions???between the personal and the political, between family and nation and between identity and race in Australian cultural formation???are explored. The methodology I use is to analyse the literary mother-figure through a ???discourse on health??? from a soma-political, socio-cultural and historical perspective which sought to categorise, regulate and discipline women???s lives to ensure that white women conformed to their designated roles as mothers and that they did so within the confines of marriage. The literary mother-figure, as represented in Prichard???s and Dark???s novels, is frequently at odds with the culturally constructed mother-figure as represented in political and religious discourses, and in popular forms of culture such as advertising, film and women???s magazines. This culturally constructed ???ideal??? mother-figure is intimately linked to nationalist discourses of racial hygiene, of Christian morality, and of civic and social order controlled by such patriarchal institutions as the state, the church, the law and the medical professions during the period under review. This is reflected in Prichard???s and Dark???s inter-war novels which embody unresolved tensions in a way that challenges representations of the mother-figure by mainstream culture. However, their post-war novels show a greater compliance with nationalist ideologies of the good and healthy mother-figure who conforms more closely with an idealised notion of motherhood, leading up to the 1950s. Through a detailed analysis of the two writers??? changing representations of the mother-figure, I argue that the mother-figure is a key trope through which unspoken tensions and forces that have shaped (and continue to shape) Australian culture and society can be understood.

This thesis argues that through bringing together two branches of inquiry???the literary work of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Eleanor Dark and socio-feminist theory on health, contagion and the female body???the discursive body of the mother-figure in their novels serves as a trope through which otherwise unspoken tensions???between the personal and the political, between family and nation and between identity and race in Australian cultural formation???are explored. The methodology I use is to analyse the literary mother-figure through a ???discourse on health??? from a soma-political, socio-cultural and historical perspective which sought to categorise, regulate and discipline women???s lives to ensure that white women conformed to their designated roles as mothers and that they did so within the confines of marriage. The literary mother-figure, as represented in Prichard???s and Dark???s novels, is frequently at odds with the culturally constructed mother-figure as represented in political and religious discourses, and in popular forms of culture such as advertising, film and women???s magazines. This culturally constructed ???ideal??? mother-figure is intimately linked to nationalist discourses of racial hygiene, of Christian morality, and of civic and social order controlled by such patriarchal institutions as the state, the church, the law and the medical professions during the period under review. This is reflected in Prichard???s and Dark???s inter-war novels which embody unresolved tensions in a way that challenges representations of the mother-figure by mainstream culture. However, their post-war novels show a greater compliance with nationalist ideologies of the good and healthy mother-figure who conforms more closely with an idealised notion of motherhood, leading up to the 1950s. Through a detailed analysis of the two writers??? changing representations of the mother-figure, I argue that the mother-figure is a key trope through which unspoken tensions and forces that have shaped (and continue to shape) Australian culture and society can be understood.

There are many potential determinants of women?s labour supply including wages, unearned income, human capital endowments, demographic characteristics and family traits. Fertility behaviour, including the number of children and age of children, is also an important factor in women’s labour supply decisions. Many factors which affect women’s decisions on participating in the labour market and hours of work are also key influences on their decisions on starting a family and having a desired number of children. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of labour supply and fertility behaviour of Australian women. Using cross-sectional data, labour supply models corrected for sample selection bias, and fertility models examining different aspects of family size, the thesis finds that women’s labour supply decisions are largely influenced by their wages and fertility behaviour. Their decisions on completed fertility, starting a family and having additional children are largely influenced by their actual or potential wages.

Australian rural women are stereotypically perceived as stoic, self-reliant, and used to handling adversity. Since this iconic portrayal of resilience is traditionally (and contemporaneously) located in the harsh countryside, it is surprising that there are few articles examining this environment, person, and resilience nexus. This thesis addresses this omission by exploring the development of resilience in two cohorts of single, older women, living on their own in rural Australia. Accordingly, an ethnographic study was conducted in a small Australian town in 2012. Documentary evidence, participant observation, and interviews captured the separate and intersecting environment and person related contributors to resilience, mediated and moderated through situational relations over time. The results revealed the persistence and reinforcement of rural historical cultural stereotypes about older women, and the systematic exclusion of younger women retirees who chose to move to the town but did not fit these embedded cultural norms. When confronted with a societal attitude that socially constrains their social identity and role, and boxes them in, the older old women pragmatically accepted their situation, and successfully adapted to their new circumstances. For them, resilience is a reactive response to regain and maintain equilibrium in their lives. Conversely, the late middle-aged retirees were boxed out from actively participating and contributing to the community; for these women, resilience is equated to resignation and endurance. And as there is a symbiotic relationship between a town and its residents, this community represents a constraining force, both in terms of its stalled response to sociodemographic and structural change, and its passive indifference to the older women as exemplars of resilience. In effect, the community exerts an oppressive, dampening effect on the women's agentic resiliency; thus contradicting the prevailing literature where resilience is widely portrayed as a positive and active agentic concept.

"November 2004" / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-263) / xi, 263 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / A comparative study of the impact of international catalysts on women's entry into the national parliaments of Kenya and Australia and whether they have similar impacts on women's parliamentary recruitment in countries that have different terms of incorporation into the international system. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, Discipline of Gender Studies, 2005