School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications

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    Indigenous family life in Australia: A history of difference and deficit
    Dunstan, L ; Hewitt, B ; Nakata, S (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020)
    Indigenous family life has been a key target of family and child policies in Australia since colonisation. In this paper, we identify four main policy eras that have shaped the national and state policy frameworks that have impacted Indigenous families: the protectionism, assimilation, self‐determination and neoliberalism eras. Our analysis of these national and state policy frameworks reveals an enduring and negative conceptualisation of Indigenous family life. This conceptualisation continues to position Indigenous families as deficient and dysfunctional compared with a white, Anglo‐Australian family ideal. This contributes to the reproduction of paternalistic policy settings and the racialised hierarchies within them that entrench Indigenous disempowerment and reproduce Indigenous disadvantage. Further, it maintains a deficit paradigm that continues to obfuscate the positive aspects of Indigenous family life that are protective of Indigenous well‐being.
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    Shifts in gender equality and suicide: A panel study of changes over time in 87 countries.
    Milner, A ; Scovelle, AJ ; Hewitt, B ; Maheen, H ; Ruppanner, L ; King, TL (Elsevier, 2020-11-01)
    BACKGROUND: Increasing gender equality remains an imperative for countries and organisations worldwide, and is associated with the improved life outcomes of men and women. Unlike many health and wellbeing indicators, death by suicide is more common among men, but suicidal behaviours are more common among women. Understanding of the relationship between gender equality and suicide is inchoate, and limited to cross-sectional work. We sought to address this gap by examining within-country changes in gender equality over time, in relation to suicide rates. METHODS: Data from 87 countries for the years 2006-2016 were used in this analysis. Gender Equality was measured using the Gender Gap Index (GGI), produced by the World Economic Forum. Male and female suicide rates came from the World Health Organization. Fixed and random-effects unbalanced panel regression models were used, adjusting for: GDP/capita; population; urban/rural ratio; number of children/person;% unemployed; year. Models were stratified by gender. RESULTS: Increasing within-country gender equality was associated with a significant reduction in suicide rates for women (Coef. -7.08, 95% CI -12.35 to -1.82, p = 0.009). For men, there was insufficient evidence that increasing within-country gender equality was associated with reduced within-country suicide rates (Coef. -5.76, 95% CI -19.40 to 7.86, p = 0.403). LIMITATIONS: The reporting and collection of suicide data is known to vary across countries. CONCLUSION: There is evidence that within-country increases in gender equality are associated with significant reductions in within-country suicide-rates for women. More research is needed to understand the drivers of these associations.
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    Life transitions and women's desired number of children: the impact of motherhood, relationships and employment
    Johnstone, M ; Lucke, J ; Hewitt, B (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2020-03-27)
    To better understand the gap between women’s childbearing aspirations and actual levels of childbearing, this paper investigates the importance of employment, relationship and motherhood transitions for predicting women’s desired number of children. Women born in 1973–78 participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health were asked, at three-time points over six years, how many children they would like to have by the age of 35 years. Women who delayed childbearing, did not marry or enter a cohabiting relationship aspired to fewer children, whilst those who married aspired to more children. Notably, the two-way interactions demonstrated that for women without children, and for women who had had their first child between waves, shifting from secure work to being out of the labour force was associated with desiring fewer children. This finding supports the argument that policies which promote women’s attachment to the workforce enable women to more effectively pursue their aspirations for both motherhood and careers. The findings make a new contribution to the field by indicating that life transitions are more important predictors of desired number of children than background and demographic factors that have long been associated with, and used as explanations for, women’s childbearing.
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    Reordering gender systems: can COVID-19 lead to improved gender equality and health?
    King, T ; Hewitt, B ; Crammond, B ; Sutherland, G ; Maheen, H ; Kavanagh, A (Lancet, 2020-06-19)
    COVID-19 has delivered a shock to existing gender systems that could recalibrate gender roles, with beneficial effects on population health. The economic arrangements, policy frameworks, and market forces that determine the distribution of paid and unpaid labour across society are powerful structural determinants of health.1 The way that paid and unpaid labour is inequitably divided between men and women is central to the perpetuation of gender inequalities across the globe, and the ways that such divisions can be shifted or disrupted offer critical opportunities to modify the gender-differentiated effects of COVID-19 on health.
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    Time on housework and selection into and out of relationships in Australia: a multiprocess, multilevel approach
    Haynes, M ; Baxter, J ; Hewitt, B ; Western, M (BRISTOL UNIV PRESS & POLICY PRESS, 2015-07)
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    Disagreements among cohabiting and married couples in 22 European countries
    van der Lippe, T ; Voorpostel, M ; Hewitt, B (MAX PLANCK INST DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH, 2014-07-22)
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    SEPARATED PARENTS REPRODUCING AND UNDOING GENDER THROUGH DEFINING LEGITIMATE USES OF CHILD SUPPORT
    Natalier, K ; Hewitt, B (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2014-12)
    The use of child support is a politically and personally contested issue and a policy challenge across developed countries. This offers an opportunity to identify family practices and relationships through which hegemonic masculinity and socially valued femininities are reproduced and challenged. We present data from interviews with 28 fathers and 30 mothers to argue that when people discuss how child support is or should be spent, they are managing gendered parenting identities. Most fathers defined child support as “special money.” This position buttresses the hegemonic masculine characteristics of authority and breadwinning, discursively de-genders the care of children, and challenges mothers’ conformity to feminine and good mothering ideals. A minority of fathers presented an alternative definition of child support and fathering that underplayed the relevance of money and values mothers’ and fathers’ care and financial contributions. Mothers’ accounts of using child support emphasized their financial authority and child-centered consumption in ways that both challenge and reproduce socially valued femininity. We conclude that definitions of how child support should be used reproduce relationships of dominance and subordination that constitute the gender order.
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    Gender differences in relationship preferences after union dissolution
    Poortman, A-R ; Hewitt, B (ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2015-12)
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    Digital socialization: young people's changing value orientations towards internet use between adolescence and early adulthood
    Smith, J ; Hewitt, B ; Skrbis, Z (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2015-09-02)