Research
Members of the Centre are involved in a wide range of projects relating to gender. The Centre is actively working to develop these research strengths, fostering collaboration and developing new projects in our key research areas of social inclusion, citizenship and health.
Research clusters
Currently collaborative research clusters at the Centre are devoted to
- Sexualities, Health and Identity Cluster (contact Vivienne Moore or Shona Crabb)
- Masculinities and Social Innovation (contact Mandy Treagus).
- Activist Intellectuals (contact Margaret Allen).
- Gender and Environmental Activism (contact Melissa Nursey-Bray)
Collaborative Research Projects
RASA Project
This project brings together scholars within the Fay Gale Centre, and beyond, with peak nongovernment bodies concerned with sexual health and sexual education. While there is considerable evidence that sexual wellbeing is viewed as highly important by most people, the meaning of sexual wellbeing and why it is matters remains somewhat less clear. This developing research agenda is intended to provide innovative research on an arena that is critical to a number of government and nongovernment agencies.
Mining Project
This projected project draws upon our extensive cross-disciplinary expertise with regard to differential gender impacts for men and women in relation to mining. Our concerns with examination of social and health issues linked with masculinities/men and of equity issues for women in the workplace and community are central here. Our intention is to provide data and practical policy assistance which will be of use to mining companies, governments, communities and non government organisations.
2012 Supported Research Projects
The Fay Gale Centre Fellowship Scheme supports Members' gender-related research projects by providing competitive funding for grant applications, book manuscripts, early career projects, and submission of research articles to high-ranking journals. Please note that Affiliate Members are not elligible for Fellowship funding.
In 2012 the Fay Gale Centre is pleased to be supporting the following Fellows' projects:
Associate Professor Rachel Ankeny
Article Fellowship for the Article Understanding Australian Women's Attitudes to Genetically-Modified Foods
Dr Melissa Nursey-Bray
Article Fellowship for the Article Gender, Social Inclusion and Climate Change
Dr Dee Michel
Article Fellowship for the article On the Edge: Kylie Tennant's Representation of Adolescent girls in State Care
Ms Anne Hewitt
Article Fellowship for the article Can a theoretical consideration of Australia's anti-discrimination laws contribute to the harmonisation project
Dr Jessie Gunson
Early Career Researcher Fellowship for the project Examining Gender, Agency, and Medicalisation in the context of Menstrual SuppressionAssociate Professor
Associate Professor Jenny Baker
Book Felowship for the book titled Theorising Survival: Indigenous Women and Social and Emotional Wellbeing
Dr Ros Prosser and Associate Professor Rob Cover
Book Felowship for the book titled Queer Memory Project: Narratives and Histories of Sexual Minority Communities and Subjectivities
Dr Mandy Treagus and Associate Professor Cathy Speck
Book Felowship for the edited book titled Body Work: Performativity, Femininities and the Visual
Dr Mandy Treagus and Associate Professor Rob Cover
Grant Felowship for the project titled Masculinity, Respectful and Responsible Off-field Behaviour in Australian Masculine Team Sport: Primary Prevention, Early Intervention and Generational Change
Key Research Areas
Social Inclusion
The concept of social inclusion seeks full access to society for all of its members, and is currently high on the agenda of the Australian Government as well as in international forums. In spite of many apparent advances in the position of women, gender disadvantage remains one of the most intractable dimensions of social exclusion and inequity - for instance in terms of access to financial resources, housing, paid labour and leisure time. Hence addressing gendered inequities in their many forms - economic, spatial, social, cultural - must be a crucial goal in the pursuit of any model of social inclusion. The Fay Gale centre actively pursues research in the social sciences which engages with the concept and goals of social inclusion and equity. It also actively pursues theoretical and applied understandings of the intersections of gender with other dimensions of disadvantage and exclusion, such as race and ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and class.
Citizenship
Whether conceptualised as involvement in formal political processes (for example standing for parliament), or in wider terms as participation in the ongoing life of the community, citizenship is an important concept for analysis of the gendered organisation of society. The division between the public and the private upon which our political systems are built is itself a gendered division. Thinking citizenship in terms of gender thus requires rethinking such everyday issues as labour force participation, domestic labour and child-rearing, and the framing of what counts as ‘public debate'. Thinking gender in terms of citizenship encourages us to ask about who is recognised as a member of the community, whose voices are heard, and what empowerment involves in particular contexts. Developments in globalised communications, social media and internet activism add new dimensions to these questions. Research at the Fay Gale Centre pursues studies of gender in politics, gender activism, and social movements, seeking to document and reconfigure the gendered assumptions and practices that inform political life.
Health
Gender and health are deeply implicated in one another. There are ongoing gender patterns in who accesses health services and in how they are treated as gendered patients. Health itself is frequently conceptualised in gendered terms, with some illnesses constructed as being particularly feminine, while masculinity may be constructed in contrast as a state of physical and mental invulnerability. The politics of reproductive policy are inextricable from understandings of gender and sexuality, often reproducing norms of heterosexuality and biological understandings of nature and nurture that have inequitable effects on non-traditional families. Such issues become more complex as advances in medicine offer new opportunities and techniques for managing reproduction and new ways of thinking about gender identity. A number of researchers at the Fay Gale Centre are pursuing research in the fields of public health, health policy, and health discourse which promise productive ways of expanding the gendered limits of health practice, and enhancing health outcomes.
