Search results

There exists no detailed account of the 40 Australian women teachers employed within the “concentration camps” established by British forces in the Orange River and Transvaal colonies during the Boer War. The purpose of this paper is to critically respond to this dearth in historiography.

A large corpus of newspaper accounts represents the richest, most accessible and relatively idiosyncratic source of data concerning this contingent of women. The research paper therefore interprets concomitant print-based media reports of the period as a resource for educational and historiographical data.

Towards the end of the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902) a total of 40 Australian female teachers – four from Queensland, six from South Australia, 14 from Victoria and 16 from New South Wales – successfully answered the imperial call conscripting educators for schools within “concentration camps” established by British forces in the Orange River and Transvaal colonies. Women’s exclusive participation in this initiative, while ostensibly to teach the Boer children detained within these camps, also exerted an influential effect on the popular consciousness in reimagining cultural ideals about female teachers’ professionalism in ideological terms.

One limitation of the study relates to the dearth in official records about Australian women teachers in concentration camps given that; not only are Boer War-related records generally difficult to source; but also that even the existent data is incomplete with many chapters missing completely from record. Therefore, while the data about these women is far from complete, the account in terms of newspaper reports relies on the existent accounts of them typically in cases where their school and community observe their contributions to this military campaign and thus credit them with media publicity.

The paper’s originality lies in recovering the involvement of a previously underrepresented contingent of Australian women teachers while simultaneously offering a primary reading of the ideological work this involvement played in influencing the political narrative of Australia’s educational involvement in the Boer War.

Two research studies, conducted in 1984 and 1992 respectively, examined the position of women in management within the Australian private sector to determine if women had made occupational progress or, like some other groups, had regressed or just maintained a status quo position. The results revealed that women had not improved their position in management over the nine‐year period. While there were more women in supervisory positions, there were fewer women in all levels of management. Some shifts had been made by the women in their management functional areas‐that is a movement out of “soft” management areas and into more mainstream areas, while women were also being given more opportunities to attend both internal and external training programmes sponsored by their organizations. However, women managers had still not achieved pay parity, while fewer women were receiving promotion to management or within management compared with 1984. Nor were any major improvements seen in the numbers of women being sent on “élite” management training programmes. The research concluded that women′s progress in management was “stalled” within these Australian companies. Women had two options, if they wished to achieve the ultimate in their careers. They could leave and open their own business, but risk further marginalization owing to the nature of their self‐employment. Or they could stay and attempt to change the organizational culture by enlisting the support of other managerial women as well as policy makers. A “renaissance” in both policy and strategy is needed, if Australian managerial women are going to achieve their full potential within the Australian commercial and corporate sector.

Commencing with publications in the 1970s, the purpose of this paper is to review the historical writing about Australian and New Zealand teachers over the past 50 years.

The paper incorporates men and women who led and taught in domestic spaces, per-school, primary, secondary and higher education. It is structured around publications in the ANZHES Journal and History of Education Review, and includes research published in other forums as appropriate. The literature review is selective rather than comprehensive.

Since the 1980s, the history of New Zealand and Australian teachers has mostly focussed on women educators in an increasing array of contexts, and incorporated various theoretical perspectives over time.

The paper highlights key themes and identifies potential directions for research into Australian and New Zealand teachers.

Recognizing changing demographics and the importance of balancing the workforce, proactive organizations are now pursuing deliberate strategies to improve women′s employment and career opportunities for women at all levels of industry. Describes some parallel Australian initiatives. These include moves to facilitate the combination of work and family responsibilities, particularly beneficial for women. These initiatives bode well for women′s career development generally, and particularly within the realms of senior management.

My feminist, narrative research privileges women’s voice. It comprises a cross‐cultural narrative analysis of 11 Mongolian and 11 Australian women’s stories of survival, recovery and remaking of self following domestic/intimate partner violence. With a major focus on narrative identity, I identified plots and themes of individual autobiographical narratives, as well as relevant canonical narratives (general stories of lives arising from dominant discourses in a particular culture). From these elements I created a meta‐narrative which constitutes the body of the research report. The strength of this narrative research method was to elicit narratives of women’s journeys through and beyond domestic violence. The research process involved myself as researcher, as well as participants themselves, bearing witness to and reflecting on the women’s stories. Particularly empowering for participants was hearing and responding to their own stories and the sharing of stories among participants. In this article I give an overview of my theoretical approaches and research methods, tell the story of conducting the research and give a brief summary of my findings and conclusions.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the contributions of women teachers to the war effort at home in Australia and New Zealand and in Egypt and Europe between 1914 and 1918.

Framed as a feminist transnational history, this research paper drew upon extensive primary and secondary source material in order to identify the women teachers. It provides comparative analyses using a thematic approach providing examples of women teachers war work at home and abroad.

Insights are offered into the opportunities provided by the First World War for channelling the abilities and leadership skills of women teachers at home and abroad. Canvassed also are the tensions for German heritage teachers; ideological differences concerning patriotism and pacifism and issues arising from government attitudes on both sides of the Tasman towards women’s war service.

This is likely the only research offering combined Australian–New Zealand analyses of women teacher’s war service, either in support at home in Australia and New Zealand or working as volunteers abroad. To date, the efforts of Australian and New Zealand women teachers have largely gone unrecognised.

Examines the range and changing nature of the initiatives implemented by Australian governments under the rubric of equal opportunity. Reviews the character and trends in the Australian labour market. Provides an account of the public policy framework, including industrial relations, anti‐discrimination and affirmative action legislation. Considers employer responses and the dilemmas for the broader diffusion of diversity management.

More than a decade after Australian universities first responded to the requirements of the EEO/AA legislative framework, women remain marginalised and seriously under‐ represented in Australian universities. This paper provides a snapshot of the current status of women’s participation in the senior levels of universities and examines some of the reasons why universities are still providing a “chilly climate” for women and other minority actors. It is argued that Australian universities can no longer afford to frustrate, alienate and marginalise some of their most creative organisational actors when they are facing a new era of rapid change and competition.

This study aims to examine how working Australian Muslim men experience work-life conflict and how gender influences their experience.

Survey questionnaires were collected, either face-to-face or online, from 403 Australian Muslim men and women.

Work-to-life conflict is more prevalent than life-to-work conflict in both sexes, and there are no gender differences in the experiences of either direction of conflict. Job demands are a stronger predictor than work hours in both sexes and the findings corroborate existing Western research on the importance of work flexibility in helping both sexes cope with conflict. As expected, non-work related antecedents have more impacts on life-to-work conflict among women than in men, but the findings question the role of religion, indicating its beneficial rather than demanding nature. Finally, work-to-life conflict is a slightly stronger negative predictor of job satisfaction in women than men, whereas life-to-work conflict is a stronger negative predictor in men but not in women.

A greater focus on the work-life experiences of non-traditional populations and a change in the direction of work-life research, one that is broadened to include other roles besides work and family, such as religion, are needed.

Workplace policies designed to mitigate the negative impact of work-life conflict need to be matched to the workforce for both the workers and workplace to gain full benefits.

This research broadens the scope of work-life knowledge, one that is predominantly based on Western societies on white, English-speaking backgrounds, to men and women of non-traditional minority populations.

Beyond the public world of work, the home provides an arena for examining accounting and gender in everyday life. This study aims to examine household accounting in Australia from the early nineteenth to around the mid‐twentieth century.

The study comprises two parts. The first part, as reported in this paper, presents evidence on household accounting as prescribed in the didactic literature in Australia, and evidence of actual accounting practices based on the examination of 76 sets of surviving Australian household records available in public repositories. The second part adopts a microhistorical approach involving the detailed scrutiny of 18 sets of accounting records and relevant biographical and family data on the household accountants involved.

The study indicates that household accounting was an instrument for restraining female consumption, particularly during times of crises, and that accounting in Australian homes focussed on maintaining records of routine transactions as opposed to the preparation of budgets and financial statements. Household accounting in Australia was performed by women and men. The surviving records examined suggest that while areas of financial responsibility were defined by gender there was little evidence of formalised hierarchical accountability between spouses as has been found to be the case in Britain.

The study extends knowledge of household accounting and gender. Most historical investigations on this subject draw on instructional literature. The current investigation also examines accounting practice in the home.