Rhonda Sharp

Rubrobacter xylanophilus sp. nov., a new thermophilic species isolated from a thermally polluted effluent

One strain of a thermophilic, slightly halotolerant bacterium was isolated from a thermally polluted industrial runoff near Salisbury, United Kingdom. This organism, strain PRD-1T (T = type strain), for which we propose the name Rubrobacter xylanophilus sp. nov., produces short gram-positive rods and coccoid cells and forms pink colonies. The optimum growth temperature is approximately 60°C. Unusual internal branched-chain fatty acids (namely, 12-methylhexadecanoic acid and 14-methyloctadecanoic acid) make up the major acyl chains of the lipids. The results of our 16S rRNA sequence comparisons showed that strain PRD-1T is related to Rubrobacter radiotolerans and that these two organisms form a deep evolutionary line of descent within the gram-positive Bacteria.

I still wanna be an engineer! Women, education and the engineering profession

Womens low enrolment in post-school engineering degrees continues to be a problem for engineering faculties and the profession generally. A qualitative interview-based study of Australian women engineers across the range of engineering disciplines showed the relevance of success in math and science at school to their enrolling in engineering at university. However, for a significant number of the women the positive self-image connected with school success was not maintained by their workplace experience. Using a mixed methods approach, further investigations of the attitudes and experiences of working engineers at three large firms suggest that engineering workplaces continue to be uneasy environments for professional women. Particular issues for women working as professional engineers are identified in this paper and some educational strategies are suggested in order to better prepare engineers for an inclusive and participatory professional life.

‘Oh you must be very clever!’ High‐achieving women, professional power and the ongoing negotiation of workplace identity

This paper uses a gender perspective to problematise the connection between high educational achievement and a fulfilling professional career. Drawing data from an Australian study of women working as professional engineers in a range of locations, the paper investigates the ways in which the identities produced in the women’s educational experiences require further negotiation in dealing with the realities of their divergent workplaces. Through a deconstruction of the power relationships that form a key feature of the women’s reported workplace experience, the women are shown to engage in a range of tactics in the effort to achieve a degree of workplace acceptance and some professional recognition. The paper concludes by urging renewed attention to changing engineering education and workplace culture if the profession is to attract and retain able women.

Engineering Ignorance: The Problem of Gender Equity in Engineering

Feminist politics aims to dismantle womens inequality by naming and challenging sexual oppression and gender disadvantage. In modern Western feminism, work is an important site for this politics. It is both means and ends. Feminists argue that work itself should be redefined so that work activities outside the labor market are recognized and demand that the conditions of work within the labor market be transformed to recognize diverse gender relations and practices. Feminists therefore argue that womens unpaid work should be valued, that we should be aware of how certain tasks become gendered, that things valued as feminine should be reevaluated, and that women have equal access to all forms of work so that unpaid work is distributed more equally.2 These gains are the means to achieving feminist ends. Feminism brought womens work, which has been largely invisible, onto the stage and has effectively destabilized assumptions that womens work is gender-neutral (paid) or unimportant (unpaid).3 Feminist campaigns for political change through womens access to paid work on equal terms with men have challenged assumptions about mens natural capacities, as much as they have womens.4

DISRUPTING MASCULINITIES: Women Engineers and Engineering Workplace Culture

The disproportionate under-representation of women among engineering faculty and workplaces, and the tendency of women engineers to drop out of the profession in higher numbers than their male counterparts, continues to be a problem in Englishspeaking countries. Within the literature on women in engineering there has been an increased emphasis upon the need to refocus attention away from strategies that target women as the site of solutions, to those that address the workplace culture within engineering faculty and workplaces (Mills et al. 2006). This paper aims to contribute to this work via an exploration of cultural imaginaries of the ‘engineer’ and the implications of this for women engineers and the gender balance in engineering. The discussion flows from a research project about women engineers based on 51 in-depth interviews with 10 men and 41 women engineers. The interview sample is generally representative of the spread of Australian women engineers in terms of age, career progression, employment type, geography and engineering field. We interviewed civil, structural, electrical, metallurgical, mechanical, aeronautical, chemical and environmental engineers at a range of ages and career stages in companies, consultancies and government agencies. We also interviewed engineers in regional and remote parts of Australia. The paper opens by canvassing two of the main explanations for women’s underrepresentation within the engineering profession. Each revolves around a representation of women and their actions as either driven by reproductive roles or, alternatively, as technically under-confident and unskilled by virtue of their socialisation into femininity. Gathering support from feminist studies on women and technology, this paper suggests that these explanations recirculate a discourse about women and technology that circumscribes the possibilities for women within the profession of engineering. In the discussion that follows we argue that there are two distinctive and dominant narratives about what it means to be a woman engineer. While all the women engineers interviewed expressed confidence and passion in the technical aspects of engineering work, one group of interviews (just less than half the sample) recirculate discourse in which women engineers are ‘just as good as’ men engineers. A second group of interviews emphasise women’s difference and offer a more far-reaching critique of engineering work culture and its effects upon the quality of engineering interventions. ‘Difference’ narratives offer a radical alternative to prevailing perceptions of the ‘good engineer’, emphasising professional values and ethics within engineering work. In exploring the way women engineers negotiate the contradictions and limitations of prevailing cultural norms about women and engineering, we hope to challenge cultural perceptions about women and

The Changing Male Breadwinner Model in Australia: a New Gender Order?

Abstract Complex changes have occurred in the Australian gender order in the past few decades. A strong version of a male breadwinner/female carer gender order was an important component of early 20th century Australian social, economic and political institutional frameworks. While the male breadwinner model was far from either universal or uniform in the post World War II period, significant further changes have recently occurred. Although many aspects of the traditional gender order remain intact, it has been profoundly disrupted by restructuring within the labour market and also by the decline of the nuclear family and other socio-economic changes affecting gender arrangements within households. These changes have led to increased complexity and diversity in existing gender arrangements. Furthermore, changes and continuities in gender arrangements have not been experienced evenly and a growing polarisation has occurred in the gender roles and arrangements within different socio-economic groups in society. The winners and losers from the impact of economic and social restructuring are frequently engaged in quite different strategies of adjustment, resulting in both changed and reinforced versions of the traditional male breadwinner model.

Expenditure Incidence Analysis: A Gender-Responsive Budgeting Tool for Educational Expenditure in Timor-Leste?

Gender-disaggregated expenditure incidence analysis (EIA) is a tool for assessing the gender responsiveness of budgets and policies. However, to date there has been a limited take-up of gender-disaggregated EIA in policy and budget decision making. Using data from the 2007 Timor-Leste Living Standards Survey (TLLSS) and interviews and discussions with stakeholders, this paper conducts an EIA of expenditures on public schools and discusses the effectiveness of this analysis as an input into budget decision making. While gender-disaggregated EIA can assist in identifying gender gaps, its potential can only be fulfilled when combined with additional gender analysis and supported by a deep understanding of budget decision-making processes and the actors involved. The gender-disaggregated EIA of Timor- Lestes educational spending confirmed its usefulness as an indicator of inequalities in educational expenditure. However, a range of political, cultural, and technical barriers constrains the use of gender-disaggregated EIA in policy and budget decision making.

Women Acting for Women

In the new country of Timor-Leste, women constituted in 2011 32 per cent of the parliament, a relatively high figure in the world and in the region. But to what extent has the presence of women in parliament contributed to progress towards gender equality? In this article we argue that the passage of a parliamentary resolution on gender-responsive budgeting in Timor-Leste was an act of substantive representation, and we draw on a range of data to examine what made it possible. We find that while ‘newness’, international norms, womens movement unity, womens machinery in government and parliament and networks linking them were important, it was the development of a cross-party parliamentary womens caucus that was crucial to success. The role of gender-focused parliamentary institutions in supporting critical actors has rarely been examined in the literature on substantive representation. This is in contrast to the rich literature on institutions such as womens policy agencies. Our study suggests that more focus on parliamentary institutions is needed to discover what enables women parliamentarians to become critical actors.

Reciprocity in Caring Labor: Nurses’ Work in Residential Aged Care in Australia

Feminist economists identify reciprocity as a motivation for both paid and unpaid caring work. In general, reciprocity describes people responding to each other in similar ways, either benevolently or harmfully. The quality of care is potentially increased when care relationships are motivated by positive and generalized forms of reciprocity and decreased with negative forms of reciprocity. This study draws on nursing literature and two qualitative studies in Australian residential aged care facilities, conducted in 2002–3 and 2009, to identify a new form called “professional reciprocity.” This form of reciprocity involves deliberate and skilled relational work by nurses to facilitate mutual and interdependent exchanges with care recipients that are beneficial to both care recipients and nurses. This study argues that professional reciprocity, as a skill that can be taught, is important for achieving quality care and workers’ job satisfaction.

Care roles and employment decision-making: The effect of economic circumstance

This article uses data from a panel of Australian mature-age women to examine the effects of care roles on workers’ intentions to leave their jobs. We focus on how the employment effects of care roles can be shaped by the economic circumstances of the worker. We find that caring for an ill, frail or disabled family member has significantly lower effects on the turnover intentions of mature-age women with ‘poor’ (as compared to favourable) economic circumstances. We interpret this pattern as reflecting the financial costs associated with the provisioning of these types of family care needs.