Law Commons^™

Belonging In Time: Australian Women Playwrights In A Changing Landscape', Janys Hayes

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Shame: A Transnational History Of Women Policing Women, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

From the 1880s to the 1910s, novelist Marie Corelli reigned as ‘Queen of the Bestsellers’, far outselling any fellow authors of her day. As I read through her works to complete my Ph.D. on bestselling fiction and a history of women’s emotions, I could not help but be disturbed by the glaring anti-feminist sentiment infusing her writing. Corelli was certainly no supporter of votes for women, but neither, it was apparent, was she a proponent of advances in women’s education and employment.

Can Women Share The Honour When Honour Has Historically Kept Women Away From Frontline Combat?, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

On Anzac Day, a day when many of my colleagues will be writing about the crucial issue of the place of indigenous Australians in commemorations of war, I will reflect on another issue, the role of gender in war. In particular, I will look at how emotional regimes, specifically honour codes, have been constructed to keep women away from frontline combat.

'Such Slow Murder': Feminism, Moral Panic And Homicidal Women, Katherine Biber, Arlie Loughnan, Julia Quilter

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Maternal infanticide is an issue of perennial interest to sociohistorical scholars, criminologists and feminist researchers. In this wide-ranging book, Annie Cossins argues that infanticide is a uniquely ‘feminine’ form of criminality insofar as it draws social and legal attention to women’s bodies.

Mapping The Trafficking Of Women Across Colonial Southeast Asia, 1600s-1930'S, Julia T. Martinez

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

While slavery in the seventeenth century included a substantial traffic in Asian women, it was only in the late nineteenth century that the rise in trafficking in women in Asia came to the attention of international humanitarians who sought to combat this new form of post-abolition slavery. The increasing emphasis on women as slaves, held for the purposes of sexual exploitation, was to a large extent brought to public attention as the result of the enactment of the British Contagious Diseases Ordinance of 1870, which required that women working in prostitution be registered and counted. It was European colonialism in …

London Women In The Colonies, Ian C. Willis

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Book Review Anne Philp, Caroline's Diary, A Woman's World in Colonial Australia, Anchor Books Australia, NSW, 2015, x + 269 pages; ISBN 9780992467135.

This is a book where Anne Philp has created a narrative around the personal diaries of English woman Caroline Husband who came to New South Wales in the mid-19th century. Her father, lawyer James Husband, fell on hard times and fled his Hampstead Hill house in England with debt collectors in pursuit, and was followed to Australia by his wife and seven children. Caroline has documented her thoughts, her experiences and her feelings of her life adventure …

Work With Men To End Violence Against Women: A Critical Stocktake, Michael Flood

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper provides a critical assessment of efforts to involve men in the prevention of men's violence against women. Although there is a substantial evidence base attesting to the effectiveness of at least some strategies and interventions, this field is also limited in important ways. Violence prevention efforts often have focused on changing men's attitudes, rather than also seeking to transform structural and institutional inequalities. While feminist and queer scholarship has explored diversities and pluralities in the organisation of sexuality, much violence prevention work often assumes a homogenously heterosexual male constituency. Too often this work is conceptually simplistic with regard …

Olivetti And The Missing Third: Fashion, Working Women And Images Of The Mechanical-Flâneuse In The 1920s And 1930s, Jonathan P. Cockburn

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper addresses images of the mechanical-flâneuse as the efficient modern woman at work in the 1920s and 1930s. To do so the characteristics of flânerie, traveling theory, and concepts of self-presentation are explored in relationship to the concurrent and transcultural influence on occupation and fashionable appearance of interest in Taylorism in the USA, USSR and Italy.

From Work With Men And Boys To Changes Of Social Norms And Reduction Of Inequities In Gender Relations: A Conceptual Shift In Prevention Of Violence Against Women And Girls, Rachel K. Jewkes, Michael G. Flood, James Lang

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Violence perpetrated by and against men and boys is a major public health problem. Although individual men's use of violence differs, engagement of all men and boys in action to prevent violence against women and girls is essential. We discuss why this engagement approach is theoretically important and how prevention interventions have developed from treating men simply as perpetrators of violence against women and girls or as allies of women in its prevention, to approaches that seek to transform the relations, social norms, and systems that sustain gender inequality and violence. We review evidence of intervention effectiveness in the reduction …

A Suitable Job For A Woman: Women, Work And The Television Crime Drama, Sue Turnbull

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The first series of the Channel Nine crime drama series, Underbelly, is the starting point for a reflection on the relationship between women, work, crime and feminism. Following a brief description of the episode 'Wise Monkeys' written by Felicity \Packard which features three of the 'real' women involved in Melbourne's gangland murders, the essay considers the significant role women have played in the depiction of crime on television as creators, writers and actors. In the end, it all comes down to power and control, who wins and who loses in what Gregg and Wilson (2010) have identified as the 'cultural …

Engendering 'Rural' Practice: Women’S Lived Experience Of Legal Practice In Regional, Rural And Remote Communities In Queensland, Trish Mundy

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The experience and marginalised status of women lawyers within the Australian legal profession has been well documented over the past two decades. However, very little is known empirically about the ways in which 'rural' space and place might transform or impact that experience, and their relationship with the retention of women in rural, regional and remote (RRR) practice. This article reports on a phenomenological study of the lived experience of female solicitors practising in RRR communities in Queensland. The study asked 23 solicitors (male and female) about their experience of life and legal practice in their communities. This article concludes …

Dowry In Bangladesh: A Search From An International Perspective For An Effective Legal Approach To Mitigate Women’S Experiences, Afroza Begum

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

For some 40 years, Bangladesh has fought a losing battle against the existence of dowries and their associated abuse with no indication of even a minimal impact as dowry demands inflate and violence increases. In one year alone, dowry related violence claimed the lives of 325 women and contributed to 66.7 per cent of the violent incidents against women. This article aims to investigate the appropriateness and effectiveness of legal approaches to dowry and propose a different standard for redressing women’s disadvantaged situation in the traditional culture of Bangladesh.

Preventing Violence Against Women And Girls, Michael Flood

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Men’s violence against women and girls is a blunt expression of the pervasive gender inequalities that characterize countries across the globe. Men’s violence against women both expresses and maintains men’s power over women. Indeed, rape, domestic violence and other forms of violence have been seen as paradigmatic expressions of the operation of male power over women (Miller and Biele 1993, p. 53). Whether in workplaces or elsewhere, efforts to build gender equality must reckon with men’s violence against women.

Women And Leadership: Theatre, Sarah Miller

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

"We have something of the utmost importance to contribute: the sensibility, the experience and the expertise of one half of humanity. All we ask is that we are able to do this in conditions of complete equality." (Dorothy Hewitt, launching the Australia Council's 'Women in the Arts' report, 1983) Published in 2005, Rachel Fensham and Denise Varney's important book, The Doll's Revolution: Australian Theatre and Cultural Imagination, argues that the 1990s was a period in which women entered the theatrical mainstream and radically changed not just theatre but the way in which we think about Australian culture and identity: "Women …

Shame And The Anti-Suffragist In Britain And Ireland: Drawing Women Back Into The Fold?, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Shame has been heavily relied on as a political tool in the modern world and yet it is still a much under-historicised emotion. Using the examples of early twentieth-century Britain and Ireland, I examine how women opposed to the campaign for female suffrage used shame instrumentally in their writing. Exploring the versatility of this political device, I find that shame was used with the oppositional intentions of binding and excluding. Whereas British conservatives used it to protect an already well-established imagined community of good imperial women, Irish radicals drew on it to invite women to take part in the construction …

Justice And The Identities Of Women: The Case Of Indonesian Women Victims Of Domestic Violence Who Have Access To Family Court, Rika Saraswati

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Family Court is the most important institution for Indonesian women who have experienced domestic violence. The institution becomes their last resort to end the violence and to obtain their rights as wives when the performance of criminal justice system is not satisfying. The women’s rights as wives are basically regulated in the Marriage Act 1974 and other implementing regulations of the Act. In reality, the rights of the women in this study, that they expected to be fulfilled, were different for each individual woman victim of domestic violence because of the diverse implementation of regulations in the Family Courts …

New Women, Modern Girls And The Shifting Semiotics Of Gender In Early Twentieth Century Japan, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Vietnamese Concept Of A Feminine Ideal And The Images Of Australian Women In Olga Masters’ Stories, Thu Hanh Nguyen

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In this paper I compare Olga Masters’ portrayals of women with the ideals which are currently expected to be followed by Vietnamese women. The paper will investigate to what extend Olga Masters’ work corresponds to the Vietnamese traditional expectation of feminine ideals which are based on four essential attributes: industriousness, appropriate self-presentation, good communication skills, and virtue.

Genders At Work: Exploring The Role Of Workplace Equality In Preventing Men’S Violence Against Women, Scott Holmes, Michael G. Flood

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This report examines the role of workplaces, and men in workplaces in particular, in preventing men’s violence against women.

The report begins by noting that men’s violence against women is a widespread social problem which requires urgent action. It highlights the need for preventative measures oriented to changing the social and structural conditions at the root of this violence, including through settings such as workplaces.

Men’s violence against women is a workplace issue. As well as being a blunt infringement of women’s rights, this violence imposes very substantial health and economic costs on workplaces and organisations.

Imag(In)Ing The Pacific: Modernist Women Artists, Anne A. Collett

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

It was all very risque and, indeed quite shocking. Vanessa Stephen would marry Clive Bell, and make her name as an English modernist painter and designer; Virginia, would marry Leonard Woolf, and make her name at the vanguard of experimental English modernist literature. Virginia would be the more famous, or possibly, infamous, of the sisters, being the mover and shaker of the Bloomsbury Group - a nucleus of primarily male, primarily Oxbridge-educated intellectuals who began meeting regularly at the house of the sisters in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London, in the first decade of the 20th century. Here they discussed all …

Women's Participation In Union Parishads: A Quest For A Compassionate Legal Approach In Bangladesh From An International Perspective, Afroza Begum

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

A woman's capacity to participate in politics is a constitutionally entrenched and fundamental right in Bangladesh, repeatedly affirmed in several pieces of legislation, the most recent being the Local Government Act, 2009. Despite the endorsement of a series of affirmative features to promote women's equality, empirical research reveals very disappointing results. This paper investigates some of the fundamental constraints that hinder women's participation in Union Parishads, the third tier of local government, with special reference to a number of serious flaws in the Act. A compassionate approach is developed for the workplace to accommodate exceptional gender-centric concerns in Union Parishads …

"What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing With A Nobel Prize?" Elizabeth Blackburn, "Australia's First Women Nobel Laureate And Women's Scientific Leadership, Jane L. Carey

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In 2009 Elizabeth Blackburn (along with two of her American colleagues) won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, confirming her position as a global scientific leader. She was immediately celebrated as Australia’s first woman Nobel laureate. However, although 2009 was a ‘bumper’ year for women Nobel laureates, with five winners in total, the media coverage soon became highly negative and discouraging. Much discussion focused not on Blackburn’s scientific work but on her gender – the difficulties it was assumed she must have faced individually as a woman scientist, and her wider leadership role in encouraging and supporting other women …

Poor Mothers And Lonely Single Males: The ‘Essentially’ Excluded Women And Men Of Australia, Roger Patulny, Melissa Wong

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

It is unclear how much gendered social exclusion and disconnection reflects a problem or a preference. Women may prefer market-disengagement despite the risk of exclusion from ‘normal’ social activities through financial incapacity, and men may prefer marketengagement despite the risk of disconnection from informal social networks. This article examines these issues amongst Australian men and women. It finds women, particularly single and low-income mothers, are more socially excluded, and men, particularly single middle-aged men, are the most socially disconnected, after preferences. Future policy should be cognisant of contact preferences, intra-household support dynamics, long work hours and prevailing gender norms.

Rosemary Raza, In Their Own Words: British Women Writers And India 1740-1857 (Review), Antonio Simoes Da Silva

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Book review of:

Rosemary Raza, In Their Own Words: British Women Writers and India 1740- 1857. New Delhi, Oxford, and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. xxxii + 289 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19-5677080-9 (hbk.). £19.99; $35.00.

Jihad Sheilas Or Media Martyrs: Muslim Women And The Media, Julie N. Posetti

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Muslim women are both highly visible members of one of the most marginalised groups in Western society and the most vulnerable to vilification and media stereotyping, suffering the 'triple-whammy' effect of sexism, racism and religious bigotry. Ubiquitously portrayed as veiled, they are concurrently represented as oppressed and radical non-conformists, as threatened and threatening, as passive sexslaves and exotic, erotic beings. Symbolised generically by the distinctive religious clothing some choose to wear, Muslim women of all cultures have become the most recognisable, visible targets of racism on the streets, yet at the same time they are almost invisible and voiceless in …

White Anxieties And The Articulation Of Race: The Women’S Movement And The Making Of White Australia, 1910s–1930s, Jane L. Carey

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This chapter examines the racial anxieties at work in the Australian women’s movement in the early 1900s, focussing on campaigns and organisations aimed at increasing and ‘improving’ the white population on the one hand and discussions of the ‘Aboriginal problem’ on the other. It particularly examines the activities of the National Council of Women, the largest women’s group of this period, and the Australian Federation of Women Voters, a smaller but highly influential organisation, as well as local groups which emerged to further these causes. Specifically, it explores efforts to promote immigration from Britain, which went alongside eugenic measures to …

Indigenous Women And The Rciadic Part Ii, E Marchetti

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In the previous issue of the Indigenous Law Bulletin, I discussed the extent to which the official reports of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (‘RCIADIC’) addressed the problems of Indigenous women.1 I concluded that although the official RCIADIC reports did not completely ignore Indigenous women, they did not sufficiently discuss the topics that had the most harmful impact on Indigenous women, namely family violence and police treatment of Indigenous women.

Left Behind: Japan's Wartime Defeat And Stranded Women In Manchukuo, Rowena G. Ward

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The zanryu fujin (stranded war wives) are former Japanese emigrants to Manchukuo who remained in China at the end of the Second World War. They were long among the forgotten legacies of Japan's imperialist past. The reasons why these women did not undergo repatriation during the years up to 1958, when large numbers of former colonial emigrants returned to Japan, are varied but in many cases, the 'Chinese' families that adopted them, or into which they married, played a part. The stories of survival during the period immediately after the entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific War on …

Local Governance In Bangladesh: Towards A “Critical Mass” To Combat Discrimination Against Women With Special Reference To India, Afroza Begum

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Women’s right to freedom from discrimination is the constitutionally entrenched fundamental right… and is repeatedly guaranteed in a series of legislation in Bangladesh. Bangladesh also assumes affirmative obligations to respect and ensure this right through ratifying over a dozen international human rights instruments. Despite that fact, discrimination persists in a pervasive form to deny women’s equal rights in legislative offices…, and women are unjustifiably deprived of their lawful rights and privileges….Legal initiatives and women’s activism across nations have forced to significant modifications in policies of political parties and laws to redress women’s meagre status in governance. Drawing upon this insight, …

"A Mirror For Men?" Idealised Depictions Of White Men And Gay Men In Japanese Women's Media, Mark Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper argues that Japanese women's media which portray images of foreign (nearly always white) men and Japanese gay men as objects of desire and fascination for Japanese women function as rhetorical mirrors whose real intent is to reflect back the supposed deficiencies of 'traditional' Japanese men. The paper concludes that women's media are being used as a vehicle for anti-male rhetoric, a channel for an indirect discourse of complaint whose main purpose is to critique the perceived shortcomings of ordinary Japanese men.