Hawke Research Institute
Assoc Prof Hideaki Shimura, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. 22 December, Centre for Work + Life, Magill Campus
Assoc Prof Hideaki Shimura visited the Centre for Work + Life to exchange ideas on community involvement in urban planning and university projects that encourage this involvement. Assoc Prof Shimura spoke about his current research on community development involving cooperation between citizens and universities. In 2009 he will conduct further research on this topic as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Hideaki Shimura is Associate Professor in architecture at the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo, Japan. Assoc Prof Shimura is an ardent supporter of the need to foster and maintain a healthy sense of community. As a qualified architect, Shimura researches community participation in urban design and urban planning. He is interested in how social dimensions and citizen perspectives are integrated into community development. His research on community revitalisation in his own suburb, the shitamachi (old town) area of Tsukishima, Tokyo, is highly regarded by the community that has experienced first hand the pressures associated with rapid residential development.
Dr Zeng-Hua Lu, 21 October, Centre for Work + Life, Magill Campus
Australia has experienced a growing rate of child disability, with the rate of 9.3% for children aged 14 and under in 1981 increasing to 13.2% in 1998 and 20% in 2003. This paper studied the economic effect of children's disability on their mother's labour force participation and examined population heterogeneity (diversity). We have formulated an econometric model that allows for the possible existence of heterogeneous groups of mothers, whose status in the labour force is attributed to different explanatory mechanisms in terms of different sets of explanatory factors and different interactions among factors. Our findings are based on recent Australian Bureau of Statistics survey data and present strong evidence of the existence of such heterogeneity.
This presentation drew on work by Jiahua Chen, Zeng-Hua Lu and Justin Trogdon for an ARC-funded project. Dr Zeng-Hua Lu is a Senior Lecturer in mathematics and statistics at the University of South Australia. Hi received his PhD in econometrics from Monash University and maintains a research interest in applied economics.
The NTEU presented this seminar on work–life balance and the progress made for university staff in collaboration with the Centre for Work + Life and Adelaide University's Centre for Gender Studies. 13 October, City East Campus. Speakers included Prof Barbara Pocock, Director, Centre for Work + Life, and Prof Margaret Allen, Gender, Work and Social Enquiry, University of Adelaide.
Mark Cully, General Manager, National Centre for Vocational Education Research, 22 August 2008, Centre for Work + Life, Magill Campus
A decade ago youth unemployment loomed large in the national consciousness, but the policy and popular focus is now at the opposite end of the age spectrum, on older workers. I argue that this change in the national consciousness is misplaced. While there is sound evidence that the position of young people in the labour market has improved since the early 1990s, it remains weak relative to both prime age and older workers – and has, if anything, worsened relative to older workers. Moreover, there are emerging vulnerabilities for young people. The flow of young people into high-skilled full-time jobs appears to be occurring at a lower rate than for older age groups, despite the very substantial growth in high-skilled jobs over the period and despite the higher educational attainment of young people.
Mark is General Manager at the National Centre for Vocational Education Research where he oversees a national program of government-funded research aimed at improving policy and practice in Australia's vocational education and training sector. Prior to joining the centre in 2003, Mark was a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director at the National Institute of Labour Studies. Between 1995 and 1999 he headed research and evaluation on employment relations for the UK government, where he ran the 1998 Workplace Employment Relations Survey, the results of which were published as Britain at work (Routledge, 1999). Mark has a Masters degree in Industrial Relations from Warwick University and an Honours degree in Economics from Adelaide University. He was chair of the world-renowned Adelaide Festival of Ideas from 2004 to 2007.
Dr Virginia Mapedzahama. 25 July 2008, Centre for Work + Life, Magill Campus
The increased workforce participation of women while maintaining traditional (unpaid) caring roles is a global phenomenon that has led to growing interest in the interface of paid work and family. Much of the research into work–family linkages has, however, been undertaken in the affluent countries of the West, primarily with white (oftentimes middle-class) workers. It remains a neglected subject of research in the less developed world, particularly in Africa. This paper analyses how mothers in an economy in crisis in Zimbabwe experience and negotiate the two 'worlds' of paid work and family. Specifically, this paper is based on interviews with women in Harare (Zimbabwe) who engage in informal sector trade to supplement income from formal sector paid work (what I have termed 'multiple economic activities for survival'), to illustrate that the difficult socioeconomic situation in a failing economy introduces new challenges for working mothers that impact on their work–life realities.
Virginia Mapedzahama has recently completed her doctoral studies at the University of South Australia, and has been employed as a lecturer in Sociology in the School of International Studies. She has recently joined the Hawke Research Institute of Sustainable Societies as a Research Assistant in the Research Centre for Gender Studies. Her research interests are African feminisms, black feminisms, African women's diaspora, women and work, and work–life interaction.
Virginia's PowerPoint presentation (751 kb)
Work well or marry well: gender regime under Chinese market reformXu Jie (Cindy). Presented by the Research Centre for Gender Studies and the Centre for Work + Life, 23 May, Magill Campus. By analysing what is behind a Chinese popular saying 'marry well rather than work well', this presentation explored changes to the gender regime in China. Women are not benefiting from market reform as much as men and many achievements of the socialist women's movement have been lost. Women's attitudes to paid and unpaid work and their choices for marriage are not determined by their own will. Prevailing norms and values and institutions interact to affect their decisions. When more and more Chinese woman agree to marry well rather than work well, this signals an urgent issue regarding gender equality.
Xu Jie's PowerPoint presentation (420 kb)
Xu Jie (Cindy) is Associate Professor in Economics at the Northeast Forestry University (NEFU) in China and is currently a visiting scholar with the Research Centre for Gender Studies. While at UniSA, Jie is researching women and equity following market reforms in China.
Prof Guy Standing, University of Bath and Monash University. 2 May, Centre for Work + Life, Magill Campus. Most of us have some view of what constitutes social justice, and most of us believe in the equality of something, be it income, wealth or opportunity. My own work has been dedicated to the principle that there is a claim right, or republican right, to equal basic security, and that social and economic policies should be oriented to the progressive realisation of basic economic security for everybody. Without such basic security, one cannot have full freedom. More flexible labour markets have multiplied forms of social and economic insecurity. Traditional forms of social security and fiscal subsidies do not offer a route out of that impasse. This is why a group of us, economists, philosophers, sociologists and others, formed a network in 1986 called BIEN, which became the Basic Income Earth Network, a non-governmental organisation that promotes a citizenship income for all. We aim to develop a strategy for the progressive realisation of economic rights built around occupational citizenship.
Hear Guy Standing's presentation (audio streaming – you need Windows Media Player)
Dr Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath, Professor of Labour Economics at Monash University and Associate Director of Monash's Work and Employment Rights Research Centre. From 1999 until March 2006, he was Director of the ILO's Socio-Economic Security Programme. He is currently working on a book on occupations, linked to the global transformation of work and labour and is also Principal Investigator for a three-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council examining the restructuring of labour markets in China and India.
Jeff Hill, School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Utah. 4 April, Centre for Work + Life, Magill Campus. Balance has been the dominant work–life research metaphor. It assumes conflict between work and personal/family domains as they compete for the scare resource of time. Jeff Hill proposes that harmony is a better metaphor because it focuses on how work and personal/family life can facilitate one another with attendant positive outcomes for individuals, families and businesses. In this presentation he described his work–life harmony conceptual model. He then described the Singapore National Study of Work–Life Harmony, the development of the Singapore National Measure of Work–Life Harmony, and findings from the study emphasising the relationship between work–life harmony and personal, family and business outcomes.
Jeff Hill's PowerPoint presentation (880 kb)
E. Jeffrey Hill is an associate professor at Brigham Young University in the School of Family Life. He received an MBA in organisational behaviour from the Marriott School of Management and a PhD in family and human development from Utah State University. His research examines finding harmony between paid work and personal/family life. He teaches in the School of Family Life as well as a work and family class in the Marriott School of Management. Before coming to BYU, Dr Hill was a work and family subject matter expert at IBM, where he pioneered many flexible work options. Jeff and his wife Tammy both lost their first spouses and are blending a family that now includes 12 children and 7 grandchildren.
Prof Fiona Williams, Professor of Social Policy, University of Leeds. 15 February, City West Campus. There is increased employment of migrant women in domestic and care work in private households. Drawing on the methods and findings from a qualitative empirical research project that takes as its context the intersections between child care and migration policies and practices in thee European countries, Fiona developed the theoretical and normative frames for understanding this phenomenon, moving from meso- to micro- and on to macro-level. Fiona ended by arguing for a normative analysis based on global justice and the ethics of care.
Fiona Williams co-directs the
Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities
(CIRCLE) at the University of Leeds. She has written widely on gender,
'race' and ethnicity in social policy, and is currently researching the
employment of migrant workers in home-based care in Europe. Her teaching and
research interests focus on the place of care in contemporary society,
including the changing nature of family lives and personal relationships,
and the development of a political ethic of care.
