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Gender inequality in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) is well documented internationally. The Athena SWAN (AS) Charter was launched in the UK in 2005 to provide an impetus for positive cultural and structural changes to advance gender equality in UK universities. The Australian pilot of the AS Charter began in 2015 and is overseen by the Australian Academy of Sciences. Despite extensive engagement with AS over the last 15 years in the UK and more recently in Australia, qualitative research on the awards application process and its impact on AS Self-Assessment Team (SAT) members is limited. To fill this knowledge gap, we undertook a qualitative interview study examining how gender and gender equity are operationalised and understood by SAT members in the first year of an AS pilot at a regional Australian university. Findings indicate key gender differences in SAT members' motivations for AS participation which, we argue, potentially translates into unequal gendered workload distributions on the SAT. Although AS is positioned as a key mechanism for addressing inequality in STEMM broadly, this study suggests that the initiative's impacts in Australia risk being undermined by its unintentional reproduction of gender inequality in the academic workforce.

There is a well-documented absence of inclusive school-based sex and relationships education (SRE) for Australian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. Moreover, relatively few studies specifically examine how bisexual and queer-identifying young Australian women experience SRE. This qualitative study addresses the gap and contributes new perspectives by examining bisexual and queer young women's experiences of school-based SRE in the state of Tasmania through the lens of sexual citizenship. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 Tasmanian bisexual and queer young women, we argue that biomedical, risk-based and heteronormative approaches to SRE reduce young women's sexual health literacy. By framing SRE around the concept of 'sexual citizenship', this article provides important guidance on how SRE can more effectively provide bisexual and queer young women with the skills they need to be effective, engaged sexual citizens.

It is now well‐established that science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) institutions globally should invest in building diverse and inclusive workforces. However, women of color remain underrepresented in STEMM in Australia and their organizational experiences are under‐researched. To address this gap, we used a qualitative approach to explore the complex intersections of race/ethnicity and gender that may contribute to women's underrepresentation in Australian STEMM. Primary data encompassed interviews with 30 self‐identified women of color working in academia, industry, and government STEMM organizations. We drew on intersectionality theory to explore participants' experiences of their working environments and grounded theory in our analysis. This article focuses on an understudied area related to the maintenance of white male power in STEMM and everyday experiences of "in/visibility"—the paradoxical space of invisibility and hypervisibility that women of color occupy within STEMM fields. For example, various features of women of color's identities, such as physical appearance, cultural background, accent, and name, led to participants feeling "different" and hypervisible in STEMM workplaces in Australia, in which the stereotype of a white male scientist predominates. Women also felt hypervisible as race/gender tokens when they were expected to do the diversity work of the institution. In contrast, participants felt invisible when they were professionally and socially excluded from networking events, such as after‐work drinks. Women of color's experiences of having to work much harder than white colleagues to gain recognition of their organizational value also contributed to feelings of invisibility. The study findings provide deep insight into Australian STEMM cultures by foregrounding how in/visibility shows up in the experiences of women of color. This study builds on our understanding of women's STEMM careers as inextricably linked to intersectional features of social identity and white masculine power dynamics in organizations and society more broadly. We conclude by advocating for a more nuanced understanding of "women in STEMM" in Australia (e.g., via more sophisticated data collection and analysis) to ensure that national policies and initiatives benefit all women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative interviews with female expeditioners in the Australian Antarctic Program, this article examines the additional labour involved in managing menstruation during remote Antarctic fieldwork. Unlike expeditioners working on a research station, fieldworkers rarely have consistent access to private toileting facilities or dedicated times/spaces to deal with their bodily excretions. However, being able to easily access toileting facilities can significantly impact how people who menstruate experience fieldwork. This is an overlooked but crucial corporeal challenge of working in Antarctica. Findings reveal that in male-dominated spaces, expeditioners must go to great lengths to make their menstruation invisible. A primary way that women do this is through menstrual suppression technologies. When these are not available or not preferred, women negotiate trying to keep their menstruation and gynaecological health issues hidden but often do so in field settings where there is little infrastructure or support. I argue that the lack of infrastructure to support menstrual health in the field is a form of sexism that maintains women's lower status in polar field environments. To conclude, I provide practical guidance for National Antarctic Programs to support people who menstruate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tendency of the public and medical institutions to perceive fetuses as human is a problematic development because it has the potential to privilege fetuses over women. There is no [...]