Australia

Citation:

Ey, Melina. 2020. “If Women Are Everywhere: Tracing the Multiplicity of Women’s Resistance to Extraction in NSW, Australia.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 1 – 24. doi: 10.1080/0966369X.2020.1724897.

Author: Melina Ey

Abstract:

In response to the longstanding erasure of women from representations of resistance within the academy, increasing attention is being paid to myriad ways in which women are performing and enacting resistance. This is particularly evident in burgeoning research exploring women’s resistance to natural resource extraction. However, within this literature, a prevailing reliance on gender as an explanatory analytic runs the risk of overlooking a much wider, messier and diverse resistance terrain. This paper argues that in continuing to rely primarily on gender to frame and analyse women’s resistance to resource extraction, gender can inadvertently become installed as a form of strong theory, which obscures the many ways in which women’s resistance to natural resource extraction is multiple, contingent, more-than-gendered, and more-than-human. Rather than relying on singular categories of social difference (such as gender) to explain women’s resistance, this paper turns to weak theory to move away from explaining why women resist, to instead exploring the many diverse ways that they resist. Drawing on two stories of women’s resistance to natural resource extraction in New South Wales, Australia, this paper uses weak theory to attend to the diverse more-than-gendered and more-than-human ways in which women resist, and argues that such multiplicity is erased when women’s resistance to resource extraction continues to be approached primarily through singular analytical framings.

Keywords: more-than-human, resistance, resource extraction, weak theory, women

Topics: Civil Society, Environment, Feminisms, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2020

Citation:

Prescott, Jody. 2016. "The Law of Armed Conflict and the Operational Relevance of Gender: The Australian Defence Force's Implementation of the Australian National Action Plan." In Imagining Law: Essays in Conversation with Judith Gardam, edited by Dale Stephens and Paul Babie, 195-216. South Australia: University of Adelaide Press.

Author: Jody Prescott

Annotation:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, International Human Rights, Peacebuilding, Sexual Violence, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2016

Citation:

Connell, Robert W. 1990. “A Whole New World: Remaking Masculinity in the Context of the Environmental Movement.” Gender and Society 4 (4): 452-78.

Author: Robert W. Connell

Abstract:

The impact of feminism on men has produced both backlash and attempts to reconstruct masculinity. The Australian environmental movement, strongly influenced by countercultural ideas, is a case in which feminist pressure has produced significant attempts at change among men. These are explored through life-history interviews founded on a practice-based theory of gender. Six life histories are traced through three dialectical moments: engagement with hegemonic masculinity; separation focused on an individualized remaking of the self, involving an attempt to undo oedipal masculinization; and a shift toward collective politics. This last and most important step remains tentative.

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 1990

Citation:

Alston, Margaret. 2012. “Rural Male Suicide in Australia.” Social Science & Medicine 74 (4): 515-22.

Author: Margaret Alston

Abstract:

Keywords: Australia, suicide, men, rural, gender relations, masculinity, climate, farming

Topics: Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Health, Mental Health Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2012

Citation:

Stebbing, M.S., M. Carey, M. Sinclair, and M. Sim. 2013. “Understanding the Vulnerability, Resilience and Adaptive Capacity of Households in Rural Victorian Towns in the Context of Long-Term Water Insecurity.” Australasian Journal of Water Resources 17 (2): 193-201.

Authors: M. S. Stebbing, M. Carey, M. Sinclair, M. Sim

Abstract:

While the range of impacts of a changing climate on farming communities has been extensively studied in Australia, little is known about how individuals and households in small rural towns adapt to the effects of long-term water insecurity. The health and wellbeing impacts of climate variability may be experienced as direct or indirect health impacts or as reduced access to health and other services as reduced economic viability affects rural towns. Identifying risk factors for vulnerability and local measures and practices that will reduce health and wellbeing impacts offers evidence for climate change adaptation policy direction at the local, state and national level. This paper discusses the results of a study that aimed to improve understanding of the vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity of rural communities at the household scale. Focus groups with town residents and key informant interviews were conducted in three rural towns in Western Victoria experiencing differing water security challenges during a period of “drought”. Perceived health and wellbeing impacts and the differing ways in which residents adapted their lives to accommodate these changes were explored. The study revealed a range of physical, mental, oral health and food security impacts on health and wellbeing. There were clear gender differences in the ways that men and women identified, communicated and dealt with these impacts. Perceived water quality and cost were shown to be key determinants of acceptance of the small town reticulated water supply. The results of this study suggest that a history of conservatism, degree of community connectedness and communication, the small town ethic of self-reliance, and the openness of government to community involvement in decision making, planning and action around water supplies are important factors in determining resilience to threats to water security in small rural towns. 

Keywords: water security, water-supply, rural, water use, climate change adaptation

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Health, Households, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Security, Food Security Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2013

Citation:

Authors: Meagan Tyler, Peter Fairbrother

Abstract:

This paper offers a critical review of the international literature on gender, disaster and rural masculinities. Empirical reference is made to bushfires in Australia, offering new evidence from the State of Victoria. Bushfires loom large in the Australian imagination and there is an increasing amount of research now being conducted in relation to bushfire events. A significant gap remains, however, with regard to the issue of gender. Despite increasing evidence that gender plays a significant role with reference to disaster risk assessment, preparation and response, a gendered analysis of bushfire preparation and response has not been a sustained research priority. Building on the writing of others, a critical assessment is provided of the concept of a specifically Australian, rural hegemonic masculinity as a possible way of better understanding the social dimensions of gender, and bushfire preparation and response in the Australian context. This conceptual consideration is extended to draw attention to the process whereby alternative conceptions of masculinities may emerge. This recognition provides a basis for further research on gender and disaster internationally.

Keywords: Gender, masculinity, bushfire, wildfire, community fireguard

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2013

Citation:

Authors: Lia Bryant, Bridget Garnham

Abstract:

The drought-stricken Australian rural landscape, cultures of farming masculinity and an economy of value, moral worth and pride form a complex matrix of discourses that shape subjective dynamics that render suicide a possibility for distressed farmers. However, the centrality of a ‘mental health’ perspective and reified notions of ‘stoicism’ within this discursive field operate to exclude consideration of the ways in which cultural identity is linked to emotions. To illuminate and explore complex connections between subjectivity, moral worth and affect in relation to understanding farmer suicide, this article draws on theory and literature on agrarian discourses of masculine subjectivity and shame to analyze empirical data from interviews with farmers during times of environmental, social and economic crisis. The idealized notion of the farming man as ‘Aussie battler’ emerges from romantic agrarian mythology in which pride and self-worth are vested in traditional values of hard work, struggle and self-sacrifice. However, the structural context of agriculture, as it is shaped by the political economy of neoliberalism, threatens farm economic viability and is eroding the pride, self-worth and masculine identity of farmers. The article suggests that the notion of the ‘fallen hero’ captures a discursive shift of a masculinity ‘undone’, a regress from the powerful position of masculine subjectivity imbued with pride to one of shame that is of central importance to understanding how suicide emerges as a possibility for farmers.

Keywords: masculinity, rurality, suicide, farmer, shame

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Health, Mental Health, Political Economies Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2015

Citation:

Alston, Margaret, Josephine Clarke, and Kerri Whittenbury. 2018. “Contemporary Feminist Analysis of Australian Farm Women in the Context of Climate Changes.” Social Sciences 7 (2): 16.

Authors: Margaret Alston, Josephine Clark, Kerri Whittenbury

Abstract:

Climate changes are reshaping agricultural production and food security across the world. One result is that women in both the developed and developing world are increasingly being drawn into agricultural labour. Yet, because the labour of women has historically been marginalised and ignored, these changes remain largely unacknowledged. In this paper, we examine gender changes in agricultural labour allocations on Australian irrigated dairy farms impacted by climate-related reductions in water available for irrigation. In the Murray-Darling Basin area of Australia, long years of drought and the need to address ecological degradation have led to the introduction of water saving methods and these have had major impacts at the farm level. We present research indicating that a major outcome has been an increase in women’s labour on- and off-farms. Yet, the lack of attention to gendered labour distribution continues the historical neglect of women’s labour, maintains patriarchal relations in agriculture, significantly impacts women’s views of themselves as agricultural outsiders, and reduces attention to a gendered analysis of climate change outcomes. We argue that gender mainstreaming of climate and agricultural policies is long overdue.

Keywords: feminism, climate change, rural women, agricultural labour

Topics: Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Livelihoods, Security, Food Security Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2018