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The theme of International Women’s Day 2019 was #BalanceforBetter, a call to action for driving gender balance across the world. Here at Futures, we’re celebrating by reading the excellent work of women academics, and their insights on the multi-faceted topic of gender equality.

1. My CV is gender biased. Here’s what I plan to do about it

As a woman working in the environmental sciences, it was always obvious to me that most of my colleagues are men. This tended to focus my attention on surviving in a field in which I automatically contribute to diversity just by being there.

Recently though I stopped to consider what I could do to support diversity. For the first time, I thought seriously about how my own choices were influencing gender balance.

By Dr Arian Wallach, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Compassionate Conservation. Read the full article here. 

2. Why are so few girls choosing careers in construction?

Despite modest improvements, construction remains Australia’s most male-dominated industry with the lowest representation of women of all industry sectors. At every career stage – recruitment, retention and progression – men vastly outnumber women.

The report “Why Would I Want to do That for a Career?”, was commissioned in 2018 by the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) as part of a $20,000 scholarship to Dr Phillippa Carnemolla, sponsored by CULT design.

Over the one-year study, Dr Carnemolla investigated perceptions of the construction industry by examining existing research, interviewing female high school students, and analysing UTS enrolment data for the Bachelor of Construction Project Management.

A chat with Dr Phillippa Carnemolla, Senior Research Fellow and Professor Heather MacDonald, Head of School from the School of the Built Environment. Read the full article here. 

3. The law of consent

Every time I teach the law of sexual assault, I brace myself. I teach a lot of tough and gory material: war crimes, genocide, torture, murder. But, as a lecturer who habitually makes the effort to read the room, I’m always struck by how many of my students are personally invested in what I have to teach them about the law of sexual assault.

The wide eyes, the furrowed brows, the shuffling in seats and the insistent, sophisticated requests for clarification: these can’t all be symptoms of my students’ discomfort with the sudden shift to explicit sex-talk in the classroom (although, let’s be real, it’s a factor).

Taken as a whole, these observations tell me that I’m not just teaching my students about abstract legal principles. I’m offering them a vocabulary for framing their own intimate encounters and for making sense of the stories they’ve been told by others.

By Dr Katherine Fallah, Lecturer in the Faculty of Law. Read the full article here.  

4. Introducing gender lens investing. It’s more than pink-washing

Since mid-last year, Wall Street investors in sensitive industries have been insisting on so-called “Weinstein clauses”, that allow them to claw back their money if revelations of inappropriate behaviour damage the business.

It’s a mere part of something bigger, called gender lens investing, that goes way beyond the earlier concept of pink washing.

By Associate Professor Danielle Logue from the Management Discipline Group, and Dr Gillian McAllister, Senior Research Analyst in the Centre for Business and Social Innovation. Read the full article here. 

5. Act now: we can’t wait for gender equality at work

International Women’s Day aims to celebrate the progress of women towards equal social, economic and human rights. Each year we hope things are a little bit better than last year, at least a little bit different. The problem is that as far as the Australian workplace is concerned, everything looks all too familiar.

If we rewind to 8 March 2018, what did the world look like? Specifically, what did the world look like for women? Was it much different to today? Sadly the statistics tell us that little has changed.

By Professor Carl Rhodes, Deputy Dean for the Centre for Business and Social Innovation and Hannah Bretherton, Founder of the 3:30 Project. Read the full article here.

Around Twitter on IWD 2019

 

 

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