The Gender Card

Episode 33: Today on The Gender Card, Griffith University phd candidate Sofia Ammassari tells us about her research across three countries with Duncan McDonnell from Griffith University and Marco Valbruzzi from the University of Naples - looking at how gender impacts young people’s political ambitions. Studies have long and consistently shown that women tend to be less politically aspirational than men, as they are less interested in standing for election as candidates. But Sofia’s research found that women are as likely as men to want to pursue a political career within the party’s organisation. These findings are important because they help debunk well established myths around women being less politically motivated than men, when in reality, it is more the type of politlcal career that is important. These results were recently published in the European Journal of Political Research, providing new insights into the gendered nature of political ambition.@AmmassariSofia @EJPRjournal See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Gender Card, we speak to two esteemed Griffith University researchers, Professor Leonie Rowan and Dr Dhara Shah, who are investigating how gender discrimination impacts both the personal and professional lives of academic women in Australian universities. They're leading a dynamic interdisciplinary team that will use intersectionality theory to gather the experiences of academic women, and find out why so many still experience job insecurity, teaching overload, expectations around emotional labour, reduced opportunities for research and everyday sexism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Violence against women is a major human rights violation and public health problem the world over, prevalent across all societies.   Today on The Gender Card, we speak to three academics who are leading the way in a landmark Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence, which will investigate the causes of this violence. The ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women - or CEVAW - will become the world’s leading research program to stop violence against women. It will be interdisciplinary, focussed on the Indo-Pacific, and Indigenous-centred, to lead research that redresses power imbalances and enables new cultural understandings. Monash University’s Professor Jacqui True joins us today as Director of the Centre, along with Griffith University’s Professor Sara Davies as Deputy Director of the centre’s Indo-Pacific Research and Relationships. Professor Patrick O’Leary tells us about his role as a chief investigator in the Centre, and the hope they all have that by gathering all important data, CEVAW will bring integral breakthroughs so desperately needed, for lasting societal change.       See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Gender Card, we explore the emerging research around critical race feminism and how that intersects with feminist practice in arts and academia. Griffith University’s Dr Nilmini Fernando’s innovative research was recently featured in the Journal of Intercultural Studies - particularly her work in a participatory theatre-based project in Ireland creating a platform for women seeking protection - to self-represent their stories of gendered race in their encounters with the asylum system. The live performance space fostered voicing of stories that connect past to present, disrupt power relations and speak back to gendered racial constructions of "African women" to remake meanings and assumptions on their own terms. As a Sri Lankan Australian interdisciplinary feminist researcher, educator and practitioner, Dr Fernando uses her lived experience and expertise in critical race theory to expand on Sara Ahmed’s seminal work, to distinguish specific forms of Black female agency and resistance in Australia. She’s also co-editing a book based on Senior Research Fellow Dr Debbie Bargallie’s groundbreaking work on Racial Literacy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 29: Today on The Gender Card, we explore teacher activism, and how that resistance translates into the classroom. Phd candidate Carla Tapia has delved into how teachers can bring about social change through resistance, despite constant scrutiny and limitations on their teaching. Using Indigenous methodologies to understand how teachers engage with their students, she showed how teachers have developed ways to give them space to resist - by giving alternative views to history in the classroom, that have traditionally been dominated by male perspectives. Senior Research Fellow Dr Debbie Bargallie was one of Carla’s supervisors, bringing her expertise on Indigenous methodologies, and they both join us on the Gender Card today. Carla’s use of Indigenous Australian methodologies and decolonisation approaches has shone new light on the struggles that teachers face, finding their motivations to create a fairer society are often thwarted by bureaucracy, and how they overcome those challenges.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.