Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin T. Jones, Lecturer in History, CQUniversity Australia

The most explosive element of the Sussexes highly anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey was the claim that someone within the royal household had “concerns” over how dark-skinned the couple’s son Archie might be.

While Winfrey later clarified neither the Queen nor the Duke of Edinburgh were behind the remark, Meghan also suggested their son was denied the title of prince because of his mixed race.

The interview points to a larger issue of racism in the British monarchy, both contemporary and historical.

When the couple began dating, some hoped it would usher in a period of royal renewal. Meghan, who has an African-American mother and a white father, was presented as a symbol of the modern, inclusive monarchy. These hopes were gradually dashed with consistently negative media coverage, including unfavourable comparisons with Meghan’s sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.

Meghan revealed to Winfrey that the pressure to perform official duties in the face of mounting criticism led to depression and suicidal thoughts. The couple lamented the lack of support they received from the royal family.

It is a tragic story at an individual level but it also points to a history of structural racism within the monarchy. Harry noted that the press attacks on his wife had “colonial undertones”, which the royal family refused to address. These are part of a longer history of colonialism and racism in which the Windsors are entangled.

Read more: Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview: why British media coverage could backfire

The slave trade

The Queen’s distant ancestor, Elizabeth I, was integral to establishing the British slave trade. One of the founders of the trade in the 16th century, Sir John Hawkins, impressed Elizabeth by capturing 300 Africans. His biographer Harry Kelsey calls him “Queen Elizabeth’s Slave Trader” and notes that she contributed her ship, Jesus of Lubeck to his next voyage in 1564.

In 2018, Prince Charles denounced Britain’s role in the slave trade as an “atrocity” but there have been calls for the Queen also to apologise on behalf of the monarchy.

Republican campaigner Graham Smith has led the charge noting that the current royals “are sitting on a hugely significant amount which was acquired from slavery and empire”.

A colonial mindset

The British empire contracted after the World Wars and eventually dissolved in 1960s. Nevertheless, a colonial mindset has persisted. This has been regularly demonstrated by the casual racism of Prince Philip. Visiting Australia in 2002, he asked an Aboriginal Australian if they were “still throwing spears”.

In 1999, he mused that an old-fashioned fuse box must have been “put in by an Indian”. In 1986, he warned British students in China that they would become “slitty-eyed” if they stayed too long. Australia, China, and India, are just three of dozens of countries touched by British colonisation.

While the Prince’s comments — and many others — are often dismissed as “gaffes” or poor jokes, they tie into a culture war, suggesting colonialism was ultimately a net good and Britain was spreading civilisation throughout the world.

Journalist Peter Tatchell has argued that the institution of monarchy is itself inherently racist as there have only been, and likely will only ever be, white monarchs. He notes,

A non-white person is […] excluded from holding the title of head of state, at least for the foreseeable future. This is institutional racism.

While this could change, of course, the treatment of Meghan and the alleged concerns over her son’s skin colour suggest the privileging of whiteness is deeply ingrained.

Being seventh in line to the throne, there was never a realistic chance Archie would become king. The notion that his mere proximity to the throne has sparked concerns, and the failure to defend Meghan from racist attacks, again points to a structural issue.

The marriage of Harry and Meghan in 2018 by charismatic African-American Bishop Michael Curry, serenaded by a gospel choir, was a public relations coup for the royals. The Sussexes exit from royal life after such a short period, and the reasons why, is highly damaging.

Read more: Prince Harry’s decision to ‘step back’ from the monarchy is a gift to republicans

Royal silence

The monarchy has remained largely silent on the history of racism in Britain and how the royal family has benefited from racism and colonialism.

After the death of George Floyd sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, thousands across Britain were quick to show their support and solidarity. So strongly did the movement resonate, in 2020 the English Premier League had the words Black Lives Matter printed on players’ shirts, opening matches with players taking a symbolic knee.

Read more: Statues are just the start – the UK is peppered with slavery heritage

The royal family said nothing. By protocol, the monarchy does not comment on political issues but its role is to offer moral leadership. Without explicitly endorsing Black Lives Matter, the Windsors could have contributed to the zeitgeist by offering statements condemning all forms of racism and visibly championing anti-racism charities.

As a society, Britain is having a difficult national conversation about its imperial past. Statues of slave owners are being torn down and attempts to decolonise the curriculum are gathering pace.

If the royal family is not able to make similar attempts to confront the racism in its past and present, it risks falling ever further out of touch with the people it is supposed to represent.

– ref. The royal family can’t keep ignoring its colonialist past and racist present – https://theconversation.com/the-royal-family-cant-keep-ignoring-its-colonialist-past-and-racist-present-156749

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne

Review: Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

In London, Covid-19 has closed the British National Gallery. Meanwhile in Canberra, Australia’s National Gallery has opened its doors to an elegant selection of works from Britain’s collection. The two events are not connected, but they do signal how times have changed.

Since 1963, when the Mona Lisa was sent to Washington, asset rich but income poor art museums have relished the combination of kudos and cash that can come with a international tour of collection highlights. Some exhibitions originate when the home institution is closed for redevelopment, others are finely honed exercises in art diplomacy.

In 1975, New York’s Museum of Modern Art sent Manet to Matisse to Australia, an exhibition organised following the election of the Whitlam government. Visitors queued for hours to see that abundance of treasure from the USA. Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London is the result of a similar diplomatic imperative. This time Japan is the target, and Australia is the fringe beneficiary.

For many years the British government resisted requests for the UK’s National Gallery to tour its collection, one of the greatest in the world. Cultural diplomacy and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — where the exhibition was headed — led to a policy change.

Because of the importance of the Olympics, the exhibition was able to include Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, a work so luminous in its pure gold yellows that no colour reproduction can ever do it justice, as well as Monet’s The Water-lily Pond of 1899, one of his most lyrically beautiful paintings.

Read more: What does an ‘unforgettable, multi-sensory experience’ have to do with Vincent van Gogh?

The British gallery’s director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, saw this exhibition as one that would both show the range of the collection, and create a narrative about the impact of Britain on western culture.

The economics of touring art meant it was necessary to offer the exhibition to another venue outside of Japan. Canberra took the slot but the arrival of Covid in early 2020 changed all plans. The Olympics were postponed. The exhibition arrived in Tokyo just before all was locked down.

It eventually opened in June, without the Olympics but to a very appreciative audience. One visitor wrote: “What a comfort. What a joy! I could almost cry.”

The NGA was able to use the extra time to renovate its temporary exhibitions wing, shaping it to suit the narrative of the exhibition, which Finaldi describes as “the history of picture-making in Western Europe”.

While that assessment is most accurately described as hyperbole (there are, for instance, no works by women) there is a chronological progression and each room is devoted to a different aspect of western art and a different time frame.

Surprising pleasures

There are some surprising pleasures. Paolo Uccello is not represented by one of his standard set-piece battles on horseback, but St George and the Dragon with its saint on horseback. A reproduction of this painting, with its evocation of a magical world, led me to fall in love with art when I was a child.

The Botticelli, Four scenes from the Early Life of Saint Zenobius, comes from the later years of the artist’s life, after he became a disciple of Savonarola and renounced the life of the flesh.

Visitors to London see rooms crowded with Dutch art, a reflection of the common Protestant tradition of the two countries. This exhibition however only shows eight paintings from 17th century Holland, sparsely hung in one great room to give visitors a chance to properly focus on Rembrandt’s masterpiece, Self Portrait at the Age of 34.

It also includes the work I would most like to steal, Vermeer’s A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal. As with all of Vermeer’s paintings each shape, tone and colour works in perfect harmony. Every detail — from the painting hanging in the background to the young musician’s dress — implies a narrative we yearn to know.

The much vaunted English landscape tradition owes a great deal to the Dutch, but the exhibition includes a truly original Turner and also that master of nature beauty, John Constable. His Cenotaph to the Memory of Joshua Reynolds, all dappled light with a deer, is devised by the artist to place himself within Reynolds’ academic fold.

Spain was “discovered” by the English after the defeat of Napoleon, which is perhaps why the room devoted to it includes a decidedly restrained portrait of Wellington by Goya.

Velázquez’s beautifully realised Kitchen Scene in the house of Martha and Mary, is a reminder of this artist’s intelligent composition as much as his brilliant execution, while El Greco’s Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple has all the passion of the Counter-Reformation.

While the exhibition culminates with a celebration of 19th century modernists — Van Gogh, Cézanne, Monet, Degas, Renoir — whose works glow like jewels on the muted walls, its core is elsewhere.

The busiest room at the NGA show consists of 17th and 18th century British portraits, a parade of aristocrats painted by Van Dyke, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence et al.

They represent the powerful empire that sent its young on Grand Tours of Europe to return with plunder to fill their country houses. Centuries later these works, often bequeathed in lieu of death duties, entered the national collection.

Covid-19 has reshaped the way we see the world. After some decades of cheap international travel, access to distant places is again exotically unobtainable. Even when the widespread use of vaccines open up the skies again, people are likely to proceed with caution and costs are predicted to be out of reach for many.

Travelling exhibitions may once again be the only way most people will be able to access great art from outside their country of origin.

Perhaps the success of this small selection of masterpieces from London, as well as the economic realities of Brexit, may persuade the British Government to permit more art to travel.

Perhaps next time we could see Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews, or even Cézanne’s Bathers. We can only hope.

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London is at the NGA Canberra until June 14.

– ref. Botticelli to Van Gogh: from luminous, lyrical beauty to the spoils of empire – https://theconversation.com/botticelli-to-van-gogh-from-luminous-lyrical-beauty-to-the-spoils-of-empire-155963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Milani, Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, Western Sydney University

Pope Francis’s historic trip to Iraq, including visits to the war-torn north, has been deeply significant. It is one that needs to be seen in the context of peace rather than politics.

The pope, as a de facto religious “father” recognised around the world, offers consolation for all people, not just Christians. His visit brought the triple significance of hope, courage and peace to those in need.

It comes at a time when the world continues to face the dual threat of terrorism and the COVID pandemic. Entering Iraq — where COVID is still rampant and there was the risk of attack by Islamic State — was powerfully symbolic.

Iraq is home to an ancient Christian community that is still thriving today. The country’s Christian population, however, has been in steady decline since the 2003 US-led military intervention. It is no coincidence that Pope Francis chose Iraq to deliver this message of peace. As he said:

This blessed place brings us back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions.

Iraq is the ancestral home of the monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, because the so-called “father of faith”, Abraham, was from the ancient city of Ur (southern Iraq). And it is from Ur that Abraham is traditionally believed to have set out in faith for peace.

Read more: Pope Francis and the Catholic church continue to look towards science, and that can only be a good thing

Pope Francis is the first pontiff to visit Iraq. But the trip was also significant because he is foregrounding the historical by going back to a place resonant with the promise of peace between different faiths. In his speech at Ur he said:

Today we, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with our brothers and sisters of other religions, honour our father Abraham by doing as he did: we look up to heaven and we journey on earth.

The pope is not a political figure. He is the symbolic representation of the highest religious value. His visit is a reminder of the place of faith at the core of human life, regardless of whether a person is religious or not. The value of the pope’s visit is in what it represents.

This momentous occasion is about the long-term impact for positive change that religion can and should bring to the world stage. The pontiff’s address was a direct appeal to the global community, for the problems that some are now facing are ultimately shared.

Pope Francis’s visit and his message reminded me of the labour of love by Father Jacques Mourad, a priest and monk of the Syriac Catholic Church. Together with the Italian Jesuit, Father Paolo Dall’golio, they re-established the community of Mar Musa monastery in Qaryatayn, Syria, in 1991.

Theirs represented a unique group of Christians that, in their own words, had “fallen in love with Islam”, initiating and for years remaining dedicated to Christian-Muslim dialogue. In 2015 Islamic State took Father Jacques hostage. He survived the encounter, and nonetheless brought back a message of hope:

Ultimately, they are normal people like us. But their insane idea is a reaction against the injustice and evil we experience in this world.

The pope’s visit was both a reminder and recognition of the neglected and desperate need for restoration of the human spirit afflicted by politicised religious violence.

Read more: Pope’s upcoming visit brings attention to the dwindling population of Christians in Iraq

– ref. Why Pope Francis’s historic trip to Iraq was a mission of peace over politics – https://theconversation.com/why-pope-franciss-historic-trip-to-iraq-was-a-mission-of-peace-over-politics-156647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oliver Bauman, Assistant Professor, School of Psychology, Bond University

Imagine you’re in the middle of watching a riveting episode of your favourite TV show. You decide the situation calls for popcorn, so you get up and head to the kitchen.

But when you arrive in the kitchen you suddenly stop and think to yourself:

Why did I come in here?

Perplexed, you walk back into the living room. As soon as you sit down, you remember you wanted to make popcorn. You go back into the kitchen, this time with a newfound determination.

The doorway effect

We’ve all experienced a situation like this. Although these lapses in memory might seem entirely random, some researchers have identified the culprit as the actual doorways.

Many studies have investigated how memory might be affected by passing through doorways.

Astoundingly, these studies show doorways cause forgetting, and this effect is so consistent it has come to be known as the “doorway effect”.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do I sometimes forget what I was just going to say?

When we move from one room to another, the doorway represents the boundary between one context (such as the living room) and another (the kitchen). We use boundaries to help segment our experience into separate events, so we can more easily remember them later.

These “event boundaries” also help define what might be important in one situation from what might be important in another. Hence, when a new event begins, we essentially flush out the information from the previous event because it might not be relevant anymore.

In other words, our desire for popcorn is connected with the event in the living room (the TV show) and that connection is disrupted once we arrive in the kitchen.

Let’s put this to the test

If the doorway effect is so powerful, why are these memory lapses at home actually quite rare? We decided to look into this effect more closely.

We had 29 people wear a virtual reality headset and move through different rooms in a 3D virtual environment (see image below).

The task was to memorise objects (a yellow cross, a blue cone, and so on) on tables within each room and then move from one table to the next. Crucially, sometimes the next table was in the same room, and at other times people had to move through an automatic sliding door into another room.

To our surprise, we found the doorways had no effect on memory. That is, people very rarely forgot the objects, whether they went through a doorway or not.

Let’s make the memory test harder

We decided to repeat the experiment, but this time we had 45 people perform a difficult counting task at the same time, to increase the pressure on the task.

Under these more difficult conditions, this time we confirmed the doorway effect. That is, passing through doorways impaired people’s memory of the various objects. Specifically, people were more likely to mistake a similar object for the one they were supposed to have memorised.

Essentially, the counting task overloaded people’s memory, making it more susceptible to the interference caused by the doorway.

This finding more closely resembles everyday experience, where we most often forget what we came into a room to do when we are distracted and thinking about something else.

Is the doorway to blame?

Why is our result so different to the powerful doorway effect reported by previous studies?

We believe it’s because we designed the rooms to be visually identical. There was no change in context, and there was no surprise by how the next room looked. This means it’s not so much the doorway by itself that causes forgetting, but more about the change of environment.

Imagine you are in a shopping centre. Taking the lift from the car park to a retail level should lead to more forgetting than taking the lift simply to move between two retail levels.

So how might we improve our ability to remember what we’re doing as we move about from room to room?

Our results suggest the more we multitask, the more likely our memory will be flushed out by doorways.

We can only hold a certain amount of information in mind at a time. When we’re distracted by thoughts about other things, our working memory can more easily become overloaded.

Also, it’s not only doorways. Our brain engages in “event segmentation” in all facets of life, whether it’s in physical space or in a more abstract sense.

So what can we do?

In most cases, our tendency to segment our lives into distinct events is actually advantageous. Our information capacity is limited so we can’t remember too much information in one go.

Read more: Here’s why memories come flooding back when you visit places from your past

Thus, it’s more efficient for us only to retrieve information about the current situation, rather than remembering all the information from everything we’ve recently experienced.

But if we want to escape the enchantment of the doorway, our best chance is to keep a focused mind. So keep thinking about popcorn the next time you want to get some to eat while watching your favourite TV show.

– ref. It’s not just doorways that make us forget what we came for in the next room – https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-doorways-that-make-us-forget-what-we-came-for-in-the-next-room-156030

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

If we survive this economic crisis (and it is looking increasingly like we will, although the end of JobKeeper at the end of the month will be a setback) it will in large measure be because this time we’ve had real-time updates on what’s been going on.

Last time, we were flying blind.

In what must have been one of the worst-timed decisions of an incoming government ever, in 2008 the newly-installed Rudd government slashed the budget of the Australian Bureau of Statistics ahead of the global financial crisis.

In its first budget it hacked A$28 million off ABS budget, and told it to work out what to cut.

The ABS lopped off its job vacancies survey, closing it down in May, just months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September.

Then in July it cut the size of its employment survey from 54,400 people to 41,100, making the results less accurate just as accuracy began to really matter.

Rudd and his staff had to navigate partially blindfolded.

It was, as the then head of the treasury’s macroeconomic group David Gruen said at the time, as if the Titanic was sailing into iceberg-infested waters while those with the requisite skills were hard at work “in a windowless cabin”.

Twelve years on — astoundingly — David Gruen has found himself on the other side of the cabin wall as head of the ABS.

He took up the job on December 11, 2019, just days after the first Wuhan resident fell sick with what turned out to be coronavirus.

By the end of February he had “this feeling I last had in the middle of 2008”.

Not much coronavirus had spread to Australia by that point, but as Gruen recounted to the Canberra branch of the Economic Society, it felt like “something big was coming”.

Something big was coming

Gruen called a brainstorming session and asked senior staff what data they could produce quickly — far more quickly than usual — that would tell people what was happening in near real-time.

The business conditions unit said it could run a survey of 1,200 businesses, but that it would cost money — $20,000. Gruen told them to spend it. The survey began on March 16, ran for three days and was published on March 26, a record-quick ten days after the first questions were asked.

That first survey asked how COVID was hurting each business, what it expected. Then requests started coming in for further questions about cash on hand, revenue and employees. Month by month the survey evolved as the crisis evolved.

Read more: Australia’s first service-sector recession unlike those that went before it

Then the household survey unit realised it could do one. It repurposed a panel it had assembled for a different survey and went back to the same households month after month for real-time insights into things such as the changing precautions they were taking, their comfort with social gatherings, their use of stimulus payments and the state of their finances.

Spending in shops was convulsing, literally down 17.7% one month (on lockdowns), then up 17% the next (on panic buying).

Delays unacceptable

Yet the retail figures had always been presented with a delay — four to five weeks after the month to which they referred — while the bureau waited for all of the retailers it was surveying to report, making the insights anything but current.

Gruen got the bureau to release “preliminary” numbers two or three weeks earlier than usual, as soon as 80% of the businesses surveyed had responded.

Information about deaths (rather useful in a health crisis) was even worse.

Not information about COVID deaths, which heath authorities were totting up daily, but deaths from all causes, which the bureau traditionally released once a year once all the reports from coroners had come in, every September, almost an entire year after the year to which the deaths took place. Some of the deaths were the best part of two years old.

Preliminary now, final later

Gruen suggested that rather than wait until every coroner’s report was finalised, the bureau release “provisional mortality statistics” based on only doctor-certified deaths (80-85% of all deaths) monthly.

What it showed was startling. Rather than having more deaths than normal from non-COVID causes, as had much of the world, Australia had fewer.

Read more: Up to 204,691 extra deaths in the US so far in this pandemic year

The excess deaths in other countries might have been either COVID deaths not classified as COVID deaths, or deaths inadvertently caused by measures designed to fight COVID.

In net terms Australia has had neither. The bureau’s figures show we’ve been less likely than normal to die of heart disease and strokes, and far less likely to die from flu, probably because social distancing has made it harder to catch.

As incredibly useful as these innovations have been, none has been as valuable as the bureau’s inspired decision to obtain and publish near real-time payroll data.

What took months is now near-instant

The Tax Office is phasing in a requirement for businesses to report where they send their payroll instantly using a system it calls single-touch payroll. 99% of big and medium firms (20 or more employees) are doing it, and 75% of small firms.

It is data on 10 million jobs updated weekly, broken down by gender, age, industry and location — near-instant data of the kind Australia has never seen.

The treasury has been able to use it to fine tune (and change) its programs as the crisis was unfolding.

Detail like never before

And there’s more. The bureau is going to use single-touch payroll to come up with a near-instant monthly measure of earnings. It is going to use business activity statements provide an near-instant measure of business turnover.

And it has got the big four banks to hand over aggregated consumer spending data far more comprehensive than the subset that finds its way into the retail trade survey.

It is also experimenting with using anonymised electricity smart meter data to work out the extent to which people are staying at home, and using deidentified data from mobile devices to work out the extent to which we are moving about.

Read more: GDP is V-shaped, but not yet good. These three graphs tell the story

If the government has got most things right in the economic management of the crisis, it is largely because it has known more about the granular detail of what’s been happening than any government before it.

With one forecast suggesting hundred of thousands of Australians could lose their jobs when JobKeeper ends on March 28, and the impact of the extra measures the government will unveil this week uncertain, it’ll keep needing to know.

– ref. You can’t fix the economy if you can’t see it: how the ABS became our secret weapon – https://theconversation.com/you-cant-fix-the-economy-if-you-cant-see-it-how-the-abs-became-our-secret-weapon-156637

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Mitchell Lee, PhD Candidate, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

YouTube has gained a reputation for facilitating far-right radicalisation and spreading antisocial ideas.

However, in an interesting twist, the same subversive, comedic, satiric and ironic tactics used by far-right internet figures are now being countered by a group of leftwing YouTubers known as “BreadTube”.

By making videos on the same topics as the far-right, BreadTube videos essentially hijack Youtube’s algorithm by getting recommended to viewers who consume far-right content. BreadTubers want to pop YouTube’s political bubbles to create space for deradicalisation.

Pivot to the (political) left

The name “BreadTube” has its origin in anarcho-socialist book The Conquest of Bread, by Peter Kropotkin. The name emerged organically as a more comedic alternative to the name “LeftTube”, and captures the dissident leftwing nature of the creators it encompasses.

The movement has no clear origin, but many BreadTube channels started in opposition to “anti-SJW” (social justice warrior) content that gained traction in the mid-2010s.

The main figures associated with BreadTube are Natalie Wynn, creator of ContraPoints; Abigail Thorn, creator of Philosophy Tube; Harris Brewis, creator of Hbomberguy; and Lindsay Ellis, creator of a channel named after herself. Originally the label was imposed on these creators, and while they all identify with it to varying degrees, there remains a vibrant debate as to who is part of the movement.

BreadTubers are united only by a shared interest in combating the far-right online and a willingness to engage with challenging social and political issues. These creators infuse politics with their other interests such as films, video games, popular culture, histories and philosophy.

The current most popular Breadtuber, Wynn, has described her channel as a “long theatrical response to fascism” — and a part of “the left’s immune system”. In an interview with the New Yorker, Wynn said she wants to create better propaganda than the far-right, with the aim of winning people over rather than just criticising.

Euphemisms, memes and “inside” internet language are also used in a way that traditional media struggle to replicate. The Southern Poverty Law Centre has referenced BreadTubers to help unpack how memes spread among far-right groups, and the difficulty in identifying the line between “trolling” and genuine use of far-right symbols.

BreadTubers use the same titles, descriptions and tags as far-right YouTube personalities, so their content is recommended to the same viewers. In their recent journal article on BreadTube, researchers Dmitry Kuznetsov and Milan Ismangil summed up the strategy thus:

The first layer involves use of search algorithms by BreadTubers to disseminate their videos. The second layer – a kind of affective hijacking – revolves around using a variety of theatrical and didactical styles to convey leftist thought.

What are the results?

The success of Breadtubers has been hard to quantify, although they seem to be gaining significant traction. They receive tens of millions of views a month and have been increasingly referenced in media and academia as a case study in deradicalisation.

For example, The New York Times has reported deeply on the journey of individuals from the far-right to deradicalisation via BreadTube. Further, the r/Breadtube section of Reddit and videos from all BreadTube creators are littered with users describing how they broke away from the far-right.

These anecdotal journeys, while individually unremarkable, collectively demonstrate the success of the movement.

YouTube’s algorithms are a problem

The claim that YouTube helps promote far-right content is both widely accepted and contested.

The central problem in trying to understand which is true is that YouTube’s algorithm is secret. YouTube’s fixation with maximising watch time has meant users are recommended content designed to keep them hooked.

Read more: YouTube’s algorithms might radicalise people – but the real problem is we’ve no idea how they work

Critics say YouTube has historically had a tendency to recommend increasingly extreme content to the site’s rightwing users. Until recently, mainstream conservatives had a limited presence on YouTube and thus the extreme right was over-represented in rightwing political and social commentary.

At its worst, the YouTube algorithm can allegedly create a personalised radicalisation bubble, recommending only far-right content and even introducing the viewer to content that pushes them further in that direction.

YouTube is aware of these concerns and does tinker with its algorithm. But how effectively it does this has been questioned.

Limitations

Ultimately, BreadTubers identify and discuss, but don’t have the answer to, many of the structural causes of alienation that may be driving far-right recruitment.

Economic inequality, lack of existential purpose, distrust in modern media and frustration at politicians are just some of the problems that may have a part to play.

Still, BreadTube may yet be one piece of the puzzle in addressing the problem of far-right content online. Having popular voices that are tuned into internet culture —and which aim to respond to extremist content using the same tone of voice — could be invaluable in turning the tide of far-right radicalisation.

– ref. Meet BreadTube, the YouTube activists trying to beat the far-right at their own game – https://theconversation.com/meet-breadtube-the-youtube-activists-trying-to-beat-the-far-right-at-their-own-game-156125

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Phillimore, Executive Director, John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, Curtin University

Last March, Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan donned an AC/DC t-shirt to pay tribute to Bon Scott, the late lead singer of the legendary band.

He joined some 150,000 fans who gathered along Perth’s Canning Highway to hear bands covering “Highway to Hell” and other AC/DC classics.

In the 12 months since, the world has certainly been to hell and back. Politically, however, for McGowan the year may feel more like a stairway to heaven. With the state election due on March 13, polls suggest he will win easily, and even increase Labor’s already record majority. His personal approval rating sits at a staggering 88%.

Read more: Whopping lead for Labor ahead of WA election, but federal Newspoll deadlocked at 50-50

But polling is one thing, celebrity status is another. And McGowan’s popularity is bordering on rock star status in some quarters.

In recent weeks, a voter has willingly tattooed a likeness of McGowan’s face on their body, a local comedian has written a song of devotion to him, a wedding party hauled him on stage to speak to 300 cheering guests, and a video of the Premier’s dance moves at the Perth Fringe has gone viral on TikTok.

Who is McGowan, and why is the 53-year-old enjoying such a huge poll lead? And what lies in store on the other side of the election?

From the navy to state politics

Originally from regional New South Wales, McGowan joined the navy as a lawyer. In 1991 he was posted to HMAS Stirling near Rockingham, 50 kilometres south of Perth. In 1995, he won a bravery commendation for rescuing a man from a burning car.

He has been Rockingham’s local MP since 1996 — the second longest-serving MP in state parliament. He entered Geoff Gallop’s cabinet in 2005 and is seen to have chalked up solid achievements in environment, education and perhaps most notably in loosening regulations to encourage small bars.

With Labor in opposition, he took over as leader in 2012, only to see his party go backwards at the 2013 election. He then resisted a far-fetched leadership challenge from former federal minister Stephen Smith before finally winning a record victory in 2017 against Colin Barnett and the Liberal Party.

The WA factor

Most Australian political leaders saw their popularity grow during COVID-19, with trust in governments rising as Australia performed well, minimising health and economic impacts.

But WA provides particularly fertile ground for a leader. The state has always had a strongly independent streak, distant from “the eastern states”. It also firmly believes its mining and gas resources are the basis for Australia’s economic prosperity and that the proceeds have not — until a recent GST deal — flowed back to the state.

McGowan played this situation adroitly, declaring in early April 2020 that WA would become an “island within an island” by closing its borders. He took a firm line on international cruise ships. His public image was ubiquitous with daily media briefings, and softened by his spontaneous response to a media query about buying a kebab, of all things, which also went viral.

He successfully fended off a High Court challenge to WA’s hard border from businessman Clive Palmer as well as the mining magnate’s claim the state owes him A$30 billion.

Read more: Clive Palmer just lost his WA border challenge — but the legality of state closures is still uncertain

Meanwhile, McGowan worked with the mining industry to keep production going by transferring interstate fly-in fly-out workers to WA. He was rewarded as iron ore prices skyrocketed and the state’s finances grew. Regional tourism has revived and the state’s economy recovered more quickly than interstate counterparts.

Since mid-2020 daily life in WA has been largely normal again, despite a blip in January when a short lockdown was imposed, due to a hotel quarantine breach.

Of course, it’s not all bouquets. The Western Australian Council of Social Service has called on the McGowan government to do more to address child poverty, improve housing affordability and reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal young people in out-of-home care and juvenile justice. Critics have described his government’s efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its greenhouse gas emissions as “limp”. Plenty outside the state have condemned some of the WA government’s snap decisions on COVID border closures.

Despite all that, McGowan’s government remains enormously popular where it counts: among WA voters.

What’s next?

Assuming he wins — and wins big — on 13 March, what are the challenges and opportunities facing McGowan and his government?

Economically, WA appears in a strong position, and Labor’s election campaign has focused on more job creation. But the state is always subject to international commodity cycles, while tensions in Australia’s relationship with China — the main customer of WA iron ore — add a new element of risk.

Socially, dealing with homelessness and rising house prices and rents will be on the agenda, after several years of relative stagnation in the property market.

Politically, despite Liberal warnings of Labor gaining “total control” of parliament, it is highly unlikely McGowan can secure an outright majority in the upper house, given the high levels of rural malapportionment. But there is a chance that Labor and the Greens combined could win an upper house majority for the first time.

This could put pressure around issues such as carbon emission reductions, where WA Labor has generally been happy to let Canberra take the lead. More prosaically, the prospect of a big win means McGowan will have to find ways of managing a large backbench that will inevitably include restive MPs with thwarted cabinet ambitions.

Read more: The Liberals face electoral wipeout in WA, but have 3 good reasons to keep campaigning

However, the prime concern will be to avoid complacency and overreach, especially if the opposition is weak. WA governments tend to win two terms. A big win for McGowan may make a third term seem inevitable, but upsets like the Liberal National Party’s 2015 loss in Queensland show elections can’t be taken for granted.

But for now, the WA Liberals, under leader Zak Kirkup, appear to be on a road to nowhere. For Mark McGowan, it’s been a long way to the top. He is in no hurry to come down.

– ref. Meet Mark McGowan: the WA leader with a staggering 88% personal approval rating – https://theconversation.com/meet-mark-mcgowan-the-wa-leader-with-a-staggering-88-personal-approval-rating-156293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

It’s not a new thing for people to try to mislead you when it comes to science. But in the age of COVID-19 — when we’re being bombarded with even more information than usual, when there’s increased uncertainty, and when we may be feeling overwhelmed and fearful — we’re perhaps even more susceptible to being deceived.

The challenge is to be able to identify when this may be happening. Sometimes it’s easy, as often even the most basic fact-checking and logic can be potent weapons against misinformation.

But often, it can be hard. People who are trying either to make you believe something that isn’t true, or to doubt something that is true, use a variety of strategies that can manipulate you very effectively.

Here are five to look out for.

1. The ‘us versus them’ narrative

This is one of the most common tactics used to mislead. It taps into our intrinsic distrust of authority and paints those with evidence-based views as part of some other group that’s not be trusted. This other group — whether people or an institution — is supposedly working together against the common good, and may even want to harm us.

Recently we’ve seen federal MP Craig Kelly use this device. He has repeatedly referred to “big goverment” being behind a conspiracy to withhold hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin from the public (these drugs currently don’t have proven benefits against COVID-19). Kelly is suggesting there are forces working to prevent doctors from prescribing these drugs to treat COVID-19, and that he’s on our side.

His assertion is designed to distract from, or completely dismiss, what the scientific evidence is telling us. It’s targeted at people who feel disenfranchised and are predisposed to believing these types of claims.

Although this is one of the least sophisticated strategies used to mislead, and easy to spot, it can be very effective.

Read more: Bushfires, bots and arson claims: Australia flung in the global disinformation spotlight

2. ‘I’m not a scientist, but…’

People tend to use the phrase “I’m not a scientist, but…” as a sort of universal disclaimer which they feel allows them to say whatever they want, regardless of scientific accuracy.

A phrase with similar intent is “I know what the science says, but I’m keeping an open mind”. People who want to disregard what the evidence is showing, but at the same time want to appear reasonable and credible, often use these phrases.

Politicians are among the most frequent offenders. On an episode of Q&A in 2020, Senator Jim Molan indicated he was not “relying on the evidence” to form his conclusions about whether climate change was caused by humans. He was keeping an open mind, he said.

If you hear any statements that sound faintly like these ones, particularly from a politician, alarm bells should ring very loudly.

3. Reference to ‘the science not being settled’

This is perhaps one of the most powerful strategies used to mislead.

There are of course times when the science is not settled, and when this is the case, scientists openly argue different points of view based on the evidence available.

Currently, experts are having an important debate around the role of tiny airborne particles called aerosols in the transmission of COVID-19. As for most things COVID-related, we’re working with limited and uncertain evidence, and the landscape is in constant flux. This type of debate is healthy.

Read more: How to deal with the Craig Kelly in your life: a guide to tackling coronavirus contrarians

But people might suggest the science isn’t settled in a mischievous way, to overstate the degree of uncertainty in an area. This strategy exploits the broader community’s limited understanding of the scientific process, including the fact all scientific findings are associated with a degree of uncertainty.

It’s well documented the tobacco industry designed the playbook on this to dismiss the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer.

The goal here is to raise doubt, create confusion and undermine the science. The power in this strategy lies in the fact it’s relatively easy to employ — particularly in today’s digital age.

4. Overly simplistic explanations

Oversimplifications and generalisations are where many conspiracy theories are born.

Science is often messy, complex and full of nuance. The truth can be much harder to explain, and can sometimes sound less plausible, than a simple but incorrect explanation.

We’re naturally drawn to simple explanations. And if they tap into our fears and exploit our cognitive biases — systematic errors we make when we interpret information — they can be extremely seductive.

Conspiracy theories, such as the one suggesting 5G is the cause of COVID-19, take off because they offer a simple explanation for something frightening and complex. This particular claim also feeds into concerns some people may have about new technologies.

As a general rule, when something appears too good or too bad to be true, it usually is.

5. Cherry-picking

People who use this approach treat scientific studies like individual chocolates in a gift box, where you can choose the ones you like and disregard the ones you don’t. Of course, this isn’t how science works.

It’s important to understand not all studies are equal; some provide much stronger evidence than others. You can’t just conveniently put all your faith in the studies that align with your views, and ignore those that don’t.

When scientists evaluate evidence, they go through a systematic process to assess the whole body of evidence. This is a crucial task that requires expertise.

The cherry-picking tactic can be hard to counter because unless you’re across all the evidence, you’re not likely to know whether the studies being presented have been deliberately curated to mislead you.

This is yet another reason to rely on the experts who understand the full breadth of the evidence and can interpret it sensibly.

Read more: No, 5G radiation doesn’t cause or spread the coronavirus. Saying it does is destructive

The pandemic has highlighted the speed at which misinformation can travel, and how dangerous this can be. Regardless of how sensible or educated we think we are, we can all be taken in by people trying to mislead us.

The key to preventing this is to understand some of the common tactics used to mislead, so we’ll be better placed to spot them, and this may prompt us to seek out more reliable sources of information.

– ref. 5 ways to spot if someone is trying to mislead you when it comes to science – https://theconversation.com/5-ways-to-spot-if-someone-is-trying-to-mislead-you-when-it-comes-to-science-138814

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenni Downes, Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash Sustainable Development Institute), Monash University

To start dealing with Australia’s mounting plastic crisis, the federal government last week launched its first National Plastics Plan.

The plan will fight plastic on various fronts, such as banning plastic on beaches, ending polystyrene packaging for takeaway containers, and phasing in microplastic filters in washing machines. But we’re particularly pleased to see a main form of biodegradable plastic will also be phased out.

Biodegradable plastic promises a plastic that breaks down into natural components when it’s no longer wanted for its original purpose. The idea of a plastic that literally disappears once in the ocean, littered on land or in landfill is tantalising — but also (at this stage) a pipe dream.

Why ‘biodegradable’ ain’t that great

“Biodegradable” suggests an item is made from plant-based materials. But this isn’t always the case.

A major problem with “biodegradable” plastic is the lack of regulations or standards around how the term should be used. This means it could, and is, being used to refer to all manner of things, many of which aren’t great for the environment.

Many plastics labelled biodegradable are actually traditional fossil-fuel plastics that are simply degradable (as all plastic is) or even “oxo-degradable” — where chemical additives make the fossil-fuel plastic fragment into microplastics. The fragments are usually so small they’re invisible to the naked eye, but still exist in our landfills, water ways and soils.

Read more: We composted ‘biodegradable’ balloons. Here’s what we found after 16 weeks

The National Plastics Plan aims to work with industry to phase out this problematic “fragmentable” plastic by July, 2022.

Some biodegradable plastics are made from plant-based materials. But it’s often unknown what type of environment they’ll break down in and how long that would take.

Those items may end up existing for decades, if not centuries, in landfill, litter or ocean as many plant-based plastics actually don’t break down any quicker than traditional plastics. This is because not all plant-based plastics are necessarily compostable, as the way some plant-based polymers form can make them incredibly durable.

So it’s best to avoid all plastic labelled as biodegradable. Even after the ban eliminates fragmentation — the worst of these — there’s still no evidence remaining types of biodegradable plastics are better for the environment.

Compostable plastics aren’t much better

Compostable plastic is another label you may have come across that’s meant to be better for the environment. It’s specifically designed to break down into natural, non-toxic components in certain conditions.

Unlike biodegradable plastics, there are certification standards for compostable plastics, so it’s important to check for one the below labels. If an item doesn’t have a certification label, there’s nothing to say it isn’t some form of mislabelled “biodegradable” plastic.

But most certified compostable plastics are only for industrial composts, which reach very high temperatures. This means they’re unlikely to break down sufficiently in home composts. Even those certified as “home compostable” are assessed under perfect lab conditions, which aren’t easily achieved in the backyard.

And while certified compostable plastics are increasing, the number of industrial composting facilities that actually accept them isn’t yet keeping up.

Nor are collection systems to get your plastics to these facilities. The vast majority of kerbside organics recycling bins don’t currently accept compostable plastics and other packaging. This means placing compostable plastics in these bins is considered contamination.

Even if you can get your certified compostable plastics to an appropriate facility, composting plastics actually reduces their economic value as they can no longer be used in packaging and products. Instead, they’re only valuable for returning nutrients to soil and, potentially, capturing a fraction of the energy used to produce them.

Finally, if you don’t have an appropriate collection system and your compostable plastic ends up in landfill, that might actually be worse than traditional plastic. Compostable plastics could release methane — a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — in landfill, in the same way food waste does.

So, you should only consider compostable plastics when you have a facility that will take them, and a way to get them there.

And while the National Plastics Plan and National Packaging Targets are aiming for at least 70% of plastics to be recovered by 2025 (including through composting), nothing yet has been said about how collection systems will be supported to achieve this.

Read more: Why compostable plastics may be no better for the environment

Is recycling helpful?

Only an estimated 9% of plastics worldwide (and 18% in Australia) are actually recycled. The majority ends up in landfill, and can leak into our oceans and natural environments.

In Australia, systems for recycling the most common types of plastic packaging are well established and in many cases operate adequately. However, there are still major issues.

For example, many plastic items can’t be recycled in our kerbside bins (including soft and flexible plastics such as bags and cling films, and small items like bottle lids, plastic cutlery and straws). Placing these items in your kerbside recycling bin can contaminate other recycling and even damage sorting machines.

Read more: Think all your plastic is being recycled? New research shows it can end up in the ocean

What’s more, much of the plastic collected for recycling doesn’t have high value “end markets”. Only two types of plastic — PET (think water or soft drink bottles and some detergent containers) and HDPE (milk bottles, shampoo/conditioner/detergent containers) — are easily turned back into new plastic containers.

The rest end up in a stream called “mixed plastics”, much of which we have traditionally exported overseas for recycling due to low demand here. The new waste export ban may help fix this in the future.

So what do you do about plastic?

The obvious answer then, is to eliminate problematic plastic altogether, as the National Plastics Plan is attempting to do, and replace single-use plastics with reusable alternatives.

Little actions such as bringing your reusable water bottle, coffee cup and cutlery, can add up to big changes, if adequately supported by businesses and government to create a widespread culture shift. So too, could a swing away from insidious coffee capsules, cling wrap and cotton buds so many of us depend on.

Opting too, for plastic items made from recycled materials can make a big impact on the feasibility of plastic recycling.

If you do end up with plastic on your hands, take a quick glance at the graphic above, or read the University Technology Sydney’s Detailed Decision Guide to Disposing of Plastics.

Read more: How to break up with plastics (using behavioural science)

– ref. ‘Biodegradable’ plastic will soon be banned in Australia. That’s a big win for the environment – https://theconversation.com/biodegradable-plastic-will-soon-be-banned-in-australia-thats-a-big-win-for-the-environment-156566

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mahmood Nathie, Lecturer and researcher, University of South Australia

More Islamic-school students in years 11 to 12 are enrolled in science and maths than other students in Australia.

In our study of Islamic-school students’ career aspirations, about 28% of our sample were enrolled in science compared to the national enrolment rate of about 18%. Maths enrolment rates were at around 26% for the Islamic senior students in our sample, a little higher than the national average of about 25%.

But the difference was higher for Islamic-school girls, 27% of whom were enrolled in maths (compared to about 25% of male students).

We also found while courses in Arabic and Islamic studies are fundamental to the ethos of Islamic schools, the majority of students we surveyed didn’t take these subjects. Enrolment rates in Arabic and Islamic studies were about 2% and 6% respectively.

Our study drew attention to the general lack of vocational courses offered in Islamic schools, while confirming anecdotal evidence the courses on offer are heavily weighted to science and maths.

Islamic-school students need more course options and alternative career pathways (such as vocational education and training). The currently traditional pathways on offer may restrict their future prospects.

Maths and science the most popular courses

There are around 46 Islamic schools in Australia, with 38,300 students.

We collected data from nine schools in South Australia, Victoria and NSW as these are the states with the highest concentration of Islamic schools. A total of 146 year 11 and 12 students responded to our questionnaire about the courses they took and career aspirations — 68 girls and 78 boys.

While this number of students may seem low, if we exclude primary schools, this equates to a participation rate of around 20% senior school students in Islamic Schools across Australia.

We also collected data from The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to calculate the subject participation rates among senior school students nationally.

Read more: Students are more than a number: why a learner profile makes more sense than the ATAR

Like other Australian schools, Islamic-school students can choose a combination of courses from eight core learning areas prescribed in the Australian curriculum: English; mathematics; science; humanities and social sciences; arts; health and physical education; technologies; and languages.

In our survey, more Islamic-school students were enrolled in maths and science than any other course.

But only about 4% students in our sample were enrolled in information and communications technology compared to 12% nationally.

And fewer than 1% were enrolled in art — versus almost 10% of students nationally. More Islamic-school females were enrolled in art and Arabic (languages), which align with national trends. None of the males in our sample took an art subject.

Read more: Fewer Australians are taking advanced maths in Year 12. We can learn from countries doing it better

In relation to humanities and social sciences — which includes business, accounting and legal studies — female participation (more than 26%) was almost equal to male participation (27%) in our sample.

More males in our sample were studying accounting (about 4% in comparison to about 1% of famales) and business management (about 6% versus 4%).

Enrolment rates in physical education among the Islamic-school girls (more than 6%) were more than double those of boys (3%). This finding was somewhat surprising.

What they want to study at uni

Most students who filled out our questionnaire wanted to study medicine, followed by business, engineering, law, teaching and other — in that order.

Interest in medicine was about 35% among females compared to about 28% among males. Desire for engineering among males (more than 16%) was almost three times that of females (about 6%).

Most Islamic schools in Australia are located in middle- to lower-socioeconomic areas with varying levels of educational advantages and disadvantage.

Because courses like medicine and law are costly and competitive, only a minority of these students will get into their desired courses and many will need to plan for alternative options. This may include doing a vocational education and training (VET) course.

Read more: Most young people who do VET after school are in full-time work by the age of 25

Islamic schools need to offer courses that take into account the preferences of their students as well as the realities of university entry. Students need alternative pathways to courses that straddle their fields of interest — such as nursing, childhood education, electrotechnology and building design.

– ref. Senior maths and science are super popular with Islamic-school students, but that could limit their career options – https://theconversation.com/senior-maths-and-science-are-super-popular-with-islamic-school-students-but-that-could-limit-their-career-options-156387

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Mair, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland

Brisbane is in pole position to win the rights to stage the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032, after being named as the preferred candidate city last month. The excitement is building, but the hard economic realities of staging a mega-event can’t be ignored.

Previous Olympic and Paralympic Games have mixed legacies. There have been stories of venues lying abandoned and host cities left with crippling debts that have taken years to pay off. So will things be different for Brisbane?

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is well aware of the risks for host cities. In 2018, it introduced the “New Norm” for candidate cities bidding to host the Olympics from 2024 onwards, with 118 reforms to “re-imagine” how they deliver the event.

The key takeaway is the need to cut costs and risks for host cities by introducing more flexibility and efficiency. The aim of the New Norm is to produce a more sustainable legacy for host cities. But how will it work in practice?

Reduce, re-use and recycle

An example of how the New Norm will reduce costs is the relaxation of the IOC demand that each sport/sporting federation needs its own venue. From now on, venues can be used for multiple sports. This means less new infrastructure is needed.

Read more: Breakdancing in the Olympics? The Games have a long history of taking chances, from pesapallo (yes, it’s a sport) to kite flying

Another example is the idea that athletes will be able to fly in, compete in their events, then fly home. In previous Games, athletes were accommodated for the full duration of the Games.

This means we will be able to construct a smaller athletes’ village with multiple occupancies over the Games period. The village will become commercial/retail premises following the Olympics.

The IOC will now allow the use of temporary venues for the Olympics. Previously, everything was purpose-built. Now we will be able to construct venues that can be dismantled after the event, or temporarily adapt existing venues. This will keep the costs of building new venues to a minimum.

The economic implications

The New Norm means the costs of staging Olympic and Paralympic Games have been substantially reduced. But there is still big cash involved.

Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) president John Coates has said the operational budget for the 2032 Games will be A$4.5 billion.

Coates is also optimistic the Games will be delivered as near to cost-neutral as possible. He said:

[O]n a budget of A$4.5 billion, the IOC is putting in $2.5 billion […] then you get approximately $1 billion from national sponsorship and $1 billion from the ticketing.

That’s enough then to pay for both the Olympics and Paralympic Games without any call on the state, or federal or local governments.

But it is not strictly accurate to say the Games will end up costing Brisbane nothing. “Operating costs” for the Olympic and Paralympic Games basically means the cost of putting on the event. Nothing more, nothing less.

To be ready for the event, both the state and federal governments will need to invest significant sums in building venues and the athletes’ village and upgrading roads and public transport. These are capital costs, which will be taxpayer money along with private investment.

The tourism sweetener

So what might be the lasting benefits of hosting the Olympics that make it a cost worth bearing?

Based on studies of previous Olympics, three significant positive outcomes are worth highlighting.

Firstly, Brisbane and Queensland will be in the global limelight – we couldn’t afford to pay for that kind of publicity. This global attention is likely to result in increased tourism, trade and investment.

In London, more than 800,000 international visitors attended a 2012 Olympic event, delivering a boost of almost £600 million “excluding ticket sales”.

While tourism is almost certain to increase in the short term following the event, evidence for long-term increases in tourism after hosting a mega-event is mixed.

Secondly, there are many intangible benefits to the residents of host cities, including increased civic pride and social cohesion as well as community health and well-being benefits.

Thirdly, it can be argued that hosting a mega-event like this can be the catalyst to bring forward many improvements in public transport, roads and services that might otherwise have taken decades to deliver.

Not everyone stands to benefit

Although there should be an ongoing positive legacy from new roads and sporting infrastructure, there will be opportunity costs – maybe a school extension that gets delayed, or a new hospital that gets postponed.

Read more: Celebrate ’88: the World Expo reshaped Brisbane because no one wanted the party to end

Also, it is very likely any positive social impacts will not be dispersed equally. Those living in rural and regional Queensland and in already disadvantaged or marginalised communities might not see how the Games help them at all.

The IOC’s New Norm has allowed Brisbane to bid to host the Olympics at a much lower cost than previous host cities have had to bear. But we need to make sure that hosting the Games maximises the potential benefits and minimises the impacts of the negatives.

– ref. Reduce, re-use, recycle: how the new relaxed Olympic rules make Brisbane’s 2032 bid affordable – https://theconversation.com/reduce-re-use-recycle-how-the-new-relaxed-olympic-rules-make-brisbanes-2032-bid-affordable-156100

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Knight, Honorary Research Professor, The University of Melbourne

In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen.

Arthur Morrison’s detective Martin Hewitt first appeared in The Strand magazine in March 1894. It was four months after Conan Doyle had published The Final Problem, reporting the death of Sherlock Holmes, in the magazine. Hewitt was Morrison’s replacement for, and conscious opposite to, the “great detective”. Hewitt is unassuming, practical, democratic — and admirably realistic.

Morrison, also famous for the Tales of Mean Streets (1894) and the novel A Child of the Jago (1896), wrote tough East End realism — drawing on his own place of origin. He objected to the improbabilities of Holmesian detection. Both investigators watch people in detail, but Hewitt never offers the operatic deductions and insights that made Holmes mythically famous: he simply follows up the implications of what he has carefully observed.

Read more: My favourite detective: Jules Maigret, the Paris detective with a pipe but no pretence

Looking for clues

Hewitt’s base is humble: his office is up a “dingy staircase” where a “dusty ground-glass upper panel” on its door simply reads “Hewitt”. He does, like Holmes, have a narrator-friend. Named Brett, he is a fairly inactive bachelor lawyer-turned-journalist and the two are simply acquaintances, not in a lord-and-master relationship like Holmes and Watson.

In personal terms Hewitt is unlike the hyper-heroic Holmes, being a “stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round countenance”, with a “cheery, chaffing good nature”.

The major difference between Hewitt and Holmes though is their method of detection: Brett notes Hewitt:

… had always as little of the aspect of the conventional detective as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less observant in manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of the eye.

Holmes has both rich historical recall and remarkable, even improbable, powers of deduction. Hewitt possesses “no system beyond a judicious use of ordinary faculties”. While Holmes shows only contempt for the police, Hewitt welcomes their cooperation. The American scholar E. F. Bleiler, editor of The Best Martin Hewitt Stories (1976), saw Morrison’s detective as “deliberately low-key”.

Hewitt’s background also bestows him with some radically non-Holmesian powers — in one story a grim crime is solved through his ability to speak the Gypsy language. Elsewhere he shows a fluent command of London criminal slang, with explanatory footnotes. But it is Hewitt’s realistic, commonsense method that is the two characters’ main separation.

In one early story a house has seen three thefts of small jewels. Access to the rooms is impossible. In each case a used match is found near the missing object’s location — yet nighttime robbery is also ruled out. Hewitt studies the matches closely, then checks everyone linked to the house. One of them, as he expected, has a parrot. The bird has been trained to fly in through slightly open windows, drop the beak-marked match (held there on command to stop it squawking), and bring a jewel to its cunning owner.

Read more: My favourite detective: Kurt Wallander — too grumpy to like, relatable enough to get under your skin

Taking notice

Hewitt’s observation can be brisker. In another case a man is distressed by the loss of his plans for a very valuable torpedo. The detective watches as two staff search the office: suddenly a cross man appears, waving his hat and stick, demanding to see the designer. After they send him away, Hewitt settles them all down in the inner office — and produces the missing plans.

He explains he noticed that on arrival the hyperactive man had carefully placed a walking-stick in the umbrella-stand — and taken one away as he hurried off. The remaining stick, Hewitt found, was a metal tube with a wooden cover, and a screw-cap: the plans were rolled up inside. The man had copied and returned them, helped by a young assistant who confesses to the theft.

Hewitt continued his calm observation and meticulous detection for ten years and 24 stories. In later tales he travels more and, like Holmes, becomes involved in espionage matters, but also in interesting crimes based on anarchism, and even hypnotism.

After The Red Triangle (1903) there were no more Hewitt-focused narratives.

Read more: My favourite detective: why Vera is so much more than a hat, mac and attitude

Less hero, more detection

Morrison was a restless and inventive spirit, as well as a realist who could turn his writing skills to varied genres and subjects. Before his Hewitt stories he had published a set of ghost stories (1891), then an illustrated series about animals called Zig-Zags at the Zoo (1892).

Alongside Hewitt, he published The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897), six stories about a “respected but deeply corrupt private detective”. Dorrington’s activities are “of a more than questionable sort”, including getting tangled up in murder. In a final development Morrison, who lived till 1945, became an expert on Japanese art.

Hewitt was the first and sharpest of the many Holmes variations and responses in busy 1890s London, as detective stories really took off. Another notable creation was Loveday Brooke, the lively female detective produced by Catherine Pirkis in 1894.

Hewitt is a memorable, admirable critique of the pomposity of Sherlock Holmes. The latter’s romantic heroism remains less credible than the observant achievements of Martin Hewitt, Arthur Morrison’s plain-man detective.

– ref. My favourite detective: Martin Hewitt, the cheery yet gritty antidote to Sherlock Holmes – https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-martin-hewitt-the-cheery-yet-gritty-antidote-to-sherlock-holmes-152482

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Scott Morrison will announce on Tuesday a $1.2 billion extension of the government’s wage subsidy for businesses taking on apprentices, as the government starts to roll out targeted assistance for the post-JobKeeper economy.

The Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements’ wage subsidy program will become “demand driven” and in its new stage is expected to generate some 70,000 new apprentice and trainees places.

The apprentices have to be signed up before the end of September, and the subsidy will run for 12 months from the date the person starts with their employer.

The program, announced last year to help the economic recovery from COVID, provided for a subsidy of 50% of wages paid to an apprentice between October 5 2020 and September 30 2021. The maximum subsidy was $7,000 a quarter. The cost of the first stage was also $1.2 billion.

The subsidy rate will remain the same under the extension.

The initial phase of the program is fully subscribed, helping create some 100,000 apprenticeships. So far the program has assisted nearly 40,000 businesses take on a new apprentice or trainee.

On Monday, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg flagged a package of assistance measures for the post-JobKeeper transition will be unveiled within days.

Speaking in Cairns, which has been hard hit from the drying up of international tourists, Frydenberg pointed to aviation as one sector needing support.

He said the government wanted “to back businesses that back themselves”.

JobKeeper ends late this month. The government has always insisted it will not extend it, but it is also anxious to prevent its end causing setbacks in sectors that are still struggling.

Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers said JobKeeper should be extended for the Cairns area.

Also visiting Cairns he said, “There are 8,096 workers and 2,631 small businesses in this local economy which face devastation because of Josh Frydenberg’s cuts to JobKeeper.

“Nobody is saying that JobKeeper needs to go on forever. What we are saying is that the JobKeeper program needs to be tailored to what’s actually going on, on the ground in local communities and local economies like this one.”

Chalmers said any support for the local economy would be welcome, “but there’s no substitute for JobKeeper”.

– ref. Another $1.2 billion for apprentices’ subsidy, with post-JobKeeper targeted package imminent – https://theconversation.com/another-1-2-billion-for-apprentices-subsidy-with-post-jobkeeper-targeted-package-imminent-156666

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

The Western Australian election will be held on Saturday, March 13. Polls close at 9pm AEDT. I am not aware of any WA polling conducted since the blowout 68-32 lead for Labor in a Newspoll that I covered two weeks ago.

Read more: Whopping lead for Labor ahead of WA election, but federal Newspoll deadlocked at 50-50

If replicated at the election, a 68-32 two party result would be over ten points better for Labor than at the November 2018 Victorian election, which was regarded as a Labor landslide.

In recent Australian electoral history, Labor was crushed at the March 2011 NSW election, and at the March 2012 Queensland election. In NSW 2011, the Coalition under Barry O’Farrell won the two party vote by 64.2-35.8, and Labor won just 20 of the 93 lower house seats.

A more extreme seat wipeout occurred in Queensland 2012, despite a slightly narrower two party margin. Labor was reduced to just seven of the 89 seats on a two party result of 62.8-37.2 to the LNP under Campbell Newman.

The fortunes of Queensland and NSW Labor have diverged since these elections. Queensland Labor won the 2015 election, and has held office since with wins in 2017 and 2020. In NSW, the Coalition decisively won both the 2015 and 2019 elections.

In February 2001, Queensland Labor under Peter Beattie reduced the Coalition parties to 15 of the 89 seats on primary votes of 48.9% Labor to 28.5% for the Coalition. At the December 1974 Queensland election, Labor won just 11 of the 82 seats; that election was in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era.

The most recent Newspoll gave WA Labor a primary vote of 59%. Once the two major parties would win over 90% of the primary vote between them, but the rise of the Greens, One Nation and other small parties has seen the major party share decline.

It appears the last time a party came close to 59% of the primary vote was at the 1978 NSW election, when Neville Wran led Labor to 57.8%. At the 1974 Queensland election, the combined vote for the Nationals and Liberals was 59.0%.

A 68-32 two party result with a Labor primary vote of 59% would be a historical result in Australia.

Group voting tickets could see micro-party elected to upper house

Analyst Kevin Bonham has conducted simulations using the ABC’s upper house group voting ticket calculators. He says the biggest danger of a micro-party winning is in the conservative Agricultural region, which spans four lower house electorates – Central Wheatbelt, Geraldton, Moore and Roe.

As I covered previously, the WA upper house has six regions that each return six members. Three of those regions are in Perth, so that Perth has just half the upper house seats on almost 80% of the state’s population. The Agricultural region only has 6% of enrolled voters, but will elect one-sixth of the upper house.

In Bonham’s scenario, Bass Tadros, the lead candidate of Health Australia Party in Agricultural region who has put forward debunked theories about a linke between 5G and vaccines, could win through a preference snowball on as little as 0.2% of the vote. Tadros Greens’ preferences are going to Tadros ahead of Labor in that region, so they will be partly responsible if he wins and costs Labor a seat.

This is a very conservative region, and the Greens have no chance of winning a seat themselves. It would be better for Greens voters in that region to vote Labor than risk electing Tadros and costing the left a seat that could see Labor and the Greens fail to win an upper house majority.

SA poll: 51-49 to Liberals

About a year before the next South Australian election, a YouGov poll has given the Liberals a 51-49 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since September. Primary votes were 43% Liberals (down three), 36% Labor (up one), 10% Greens (steady) and 6% SA Best (up one).

Incumbent premier Steven Marshall led Labor’s Peter Malinauskas by 50-30 as better premier (54-26 in September). This poll was conducted February 24 to March 1 from a sample of 843. Figures from The Poll Bludger.

Tasmanian poll: Liberals over 50%

A Tasmanian EMRS poll, conducted February 15-23 from a sample of 1,000, gave the Liberals 52% (steady since November), Labor 27% (up two) and the Greens 14% (up one). Incumbent Peter Gutwein led Labor’s Rebecca White as preferred premier by 61-26, unchanged since November.

The next Tasmanian election is likely to be held in early 2022. Tasmania uses a proportional system with five electorates each returning five members that are elected using the Hare-Clark method. With a majority of the vote, the Liberals would easily win a majority of seats.

The EMRS polling suggests a big COVID boost for the Liberals, from 43% in March 2020 to a peak of 54% in August.

– ref. WA election could be historical Labor landslide, but party with less than 1% vote may win upper house seat – https://theconversation.com/wa-election-could-be-historical-labor-landslide-but-party-with-less-than-1-vote-may-win-upper-house-seat-156202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

The Western Australian election will be held on Saturday, March 13. Polls close at 9pm AEDT. I am not aware of any WA polling conducted since the blowout 68-32 lead for Labor in a Newspoll that I covered two weeks ago.

Read more: Whopping lead for Labor ahead of WA election, but federal Newspoll deadlocked at 50-50

If replicated at the election, a 68-32 two party result would be over ten points better for Labor than at the November 2018 Victorian election, which was regarded as a Labor landslide.

In recent Australian electoral history, Labor was crushed at the March 2011 NSW election, and at the March 2012 Queensland election. In NSW 2011, the Coalition under Barry O’Farrell won the two party vote by 64.2-35.8, and Labor won just 20 of the 93 lower house seats.

A more extreme seat wipeout occurred in Queensland 2012, despite a slightly narrower two party margin. Labor was reduced to just seven of the 89 seats on a two party result of 62.8-37.2 to the LNP under Campbell Newman.

The fortunes of Queensland and NSW Labor have diverged since these elections. Queensland Labor won the 2015 election, and has held office since with wins in 2017 and 2020. In NSW, the Coalition decisively won both the 2015 and 2019 elections.

In February 2001, Queensland Labor under Peter Beattie reduced the Coalition parties to 15 of the 89 seats on primary votes of 48.9% Labor to 28.5% for the Coalition. At the December 1974 Queensland election, Labor won just 11 of the 82 seats; that election was in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era.

The most recent Newspoll gave WA Labor a primary vote of 59%. Once the two major parties would win over 90% of the primary vote between them, but the rise of the Greens, One Nation and other small parties has seen the major party share decline.

It appears the last time a party came close to 59% of the primary vote was at the 1978 NSW election, when Neville Wran led Labor to 57.8%. At the 1974 Queensland election, the combined vote for the Nationals and Liberals was 59.0%.

A 68-32 two party result with a Labor primary vote of 59% would be a historical result in Australia.

Group voting tickets could see micro-party elected to upper house

Analyst Kevin Bonham has conducted simulations using the ABC’s upper house group voting ticket calculators. He says the biggest danger of a micro-party winning is in the conservative Agricultural region, which spans four lower house electorates – Central Wheatbelt, Geraldton, Moore and Roe.

As I covered previously, the WA upper house has six regions that each return six members. Three of those regions are in Perth, so that Perth has just half the upper house seats on almost 80% of the state’s population. The Agricultural region only has 6% of enrolled voters, but will elect one-sixth of the upper house.

In Bonham’s scenario, Bass Tadros, the lead candidate of Health Australia Party in Agricultural region who has put forward debunked theories about a linke between 5G and vaccines, could win through a preference snowball on as little as 0.2% of the vote. Tadros Greens’ preferences are going to Tadros ahead of Labor in that region, so they will be partly responsible if he wins and costs Labor a seat.

This is a very conservative region, and the Greens have no chance of winning a seat themselves. It would be better for Greens voters in that region to vote Labor than risk electing Tadros and costing the left a seat that could see Labor and the Greens fail to win an upper house majority.

SA poll: 51-49 to Liberals

About a year before the next South Australian election, a YouGov poll has given the Liberals a 51-49 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since September. Primary votes were 43% Liberals (down three), 36% Labor (up one), 10% Greens (steady) and 6% SA Best (up one).

Incumbent premier Steven Marshall led Labor’s Peter Malinauskas by 50-30 as better premier (54-26 in September). This poll was conducted February 24 to March 1 from a sample of 843. Figures from The Poll Bludger.

Tasmanian poll: Liberals over 50%

A Tasmanian EMRS poll, conducted February 15-23 from a sample of 1,000, gave the Liberals 52% (steady since November), Labor 27% (up two) and the Greens 14% (up one). Incumbent Peter Gutwein led Labor’s Rebecca White as preferred premier by 61-26, unchanged since November.

The next Tasmanian election is likely to be held in early 2022. Tasmania uses a proportional system with five electorates each returning five members that are elected using the Hare-Clark method. With a majority of the vote, the Liberals would easily win a majority of seats.

The EMRS polling suggests a big COVID boost for the Liberals, from 43% in March 2020 to a peak of 54% in August.

– ref. WA election could be historical Labor landslide, but party with less that 1% vote may win upper house seat – https://theconversation.com/wa-election-could-be-historical-labor-landslide-but-party-with-less-that-1-vote-may-win-upper-house-seat-156202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leisa Sargent, Senior Deputy Dean, UNSW Business School, Co-DVC Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, UNSW

Movements like #metoo and #blacklivesmatter have increased voice and visibility of gender and race disparities in society and, in particular, workplaces. That includes universities. As we recover from the pandemic, we need innovative approaches to reshaping workplace rituals, rules and routines to advance gender equality and ensure safe workplaces.

Universities, where we prepare professionals and leaders of tomorrow, should be demonstrating and leading these changes. It’s time to:

• embed an inclusive leadership approach

• move more quickly towards gender equality

• challenge the barriers to greater diversity

• acknowledge the unequal power relations that exist in universities.

Read more: No change at the top for university leaders as men outnumber women 3 to 1

Stop assuming the ideal worker exists: the myth is busted. Chaining people to their desks or labs for every available productive hour is not responsible or effective. Nor does it create a sense of autonomy, wellness or active connections to the workplace or community.

Finding better ways of working

Treating people with dignity and respect can achieve more meaningful ways of working. In particular, universities need to broaden the range of flexible work options. These options include:

• being adaptable about where work is done

• changing start and finish times

• a shorter week

• adapting role types and leave arrangements

• ensuring meeting times allow for community and family commitments.

More innovative approaches include vertical job share. For example, in an 80/20 split of time between two staff the division of role responsibility rests with the senior job share partner. Innovation calls for a work mindset shift from “no way” to “it starts with yes” when it comes to flexibility.

Women are traditionally seen as needing flexibility due to caring responsibilities. However, increasing flexibility for men is an often neglected but necessary part of change. It’s an obvious way to increase options for men to share family and community involvement.

Read more: Helping men get work-life balance can help everyone

When Australian universities have introduced more flexible and progressive arrangements the results have been positive. For example, “rules” on who gets a car park (such as accessibility based on caring responsibilities), promotion and lecture start times have been rewritten. Increased participation and productivity are among the many benefits that flow from more meaningful work and opportunities for women (and men) across the hierarchy.

Creating leadership pathways

However, universities need to go further. Academic and professional promotion and reward structures need to measure and recognise the impacts of all the work academics and professionals do beyond traditional measures. Measures of social, environmental, cultural and economic impacts on communities, industries, government and media are vital to ensure we are contributing to equity in society. One innovative example of such impacts is tax clinics that advise to lower-income taxpayers and small businesses while also providing practical experience for accounting/tax students.

Athena Swan has exposed the dearth of data in universities on workforce diversity such as LGBTQI+, Indigenous and migrant women. Acting on this will mean higher education encompasses a broader range of women’s diverse lives. This includes their experiences of cultural identities, disability and sexual orientation.

The HR data are meaningless unless the information adds value to the people it describes. And that requires a critical conversation about how to collect new types of data and willingness to provide it.

Universities, governments and countries cannot thrive without including all members of society. Women, especially those from diverse backgrounds, still have fewer pathways and more barriers to leadership.

Read more: 5 ways higher education can be seen as hostile to women of color

Universities have enormous opportunities to be at the forefront of ensuring more gender-diverse women, more women of colour, more women with disability and more LGBTQI+ women reach senior leadership positions. Indeed, they have a moral obligation to show the way.

Creating these pathways for diverse women will also challenge how universities operate in terms of visibility, dominant cultures and beliefs. Underrepresented women (such as of colour) have not benefited from anti-discrimination legislation or equity policies in the same way white women have.

Helping students become better citizens

Academics have a duty to create transformational educational experiences and ways of learning in partnership with our students. In particular, they need a better understanding of the nature of privilege.

Universities must work to ensure the educational experience helps students develop their competencies in active, critical, empathetic and committed citizenship. These are essential aspects of 21st-century higher education.

In practice, this means continuing to create better pathways of access and participation for underrepresented students. Tutorials, labs and studios must become inclusive learning environments.

Read more: 5 tips on how unis can do more to design online learning that works for all students

All these measures will help improve opportunities for students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds and for women in professions and disciplines where they are underrepresented.

Diversity and inclusion underpin vitality

A fundamental challenge universities face as we recover from the pandemic is to create and sustain organisational strategies that support and celebrate the investments of energy by women (and men) of diverse backgrounds. This applies both to their own careers and to realising the university’s mission.

At the core of the strategy is a deep understanding of the connection between gender and other identities for staff and students. We need to hear women’s voices from diverse backgrounds and experiences. In this way we can educate ourselves and improve our policies, practices and ways of leading.

This process of transformation is essential for universities to be safe, vital and innovative places of learning, work and research for all. Rising to this challenge means we will be well prepared for a more sustainable, equitable and just society.

– ref. Forget the ideal worker myth. Unis need to become more inclusive for all women (men will benefit too) – https://theconversation.com/forget-the-ideal-worker-myth-unis-need-to-become-more-inclusive-for-all-women-men-will-benefit-too-156107

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jagadish Thaker, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University

As Aotearoa New Zealand begins the third week of COVID-19 vaccinations, the focus turns from the 12,000-strong border workforce to their families and household contacts.

Frontline health and emergency staff will be next in line, followed by the general population. While we can expect border, health and emergency workers to be largely supportive of vaccination, the views among the general public vary significantly.

Drawing on national survey data based on 1040 participants, we identified four distinct groups: vaccine enthusiasts (36%), supporters (28%), hesitants (24%) and sceptics (12%).

Our finding is similar to surveys commissioned by the Ministry of Health which found a quarter (24%) of respondents unwilling and another 16% unlikely to accept a “well-tested and approved” COVID-19 vaccine, with a slight increase in vaccine hesitancy between surveys. An online Spinoff poll conducted in May last year and again in February this year also found an increase in vaccine hesitancy.

The COVID-19 immunisation roll-out is New Zealand’s largest vaccination campaign and effective health communication will be important to its success. A key principle is to understand the different public segments, their vaccination intentions and the information sources they trust.

This can help health authorities and local advocacy groups better communicate the most important and useful information through channels most likely to reach their target public(s).

How people receive information they trust

COVID-19 vaccine enthusiasts represent the largest segment of the New Zealand public. Almost all in this group “strongly agree” (98%) to taking a vaccine, strongly support restrictions against individuals who refuse to vaccinate, and have high trust in information sources. They are likely to be male, older, rich, highly educated, and are less likely to be Māori.

COVID-19 vaccine supporters represent a group in which most people say they “somewhat agree” (74%) to taking a vaccine. They are more likely to be male, young or middle aged, moderately educated with at least a certification or diploma, and of Asian ethnicity. This group may require a little nudge from their trusted sources of information such as health experts and mass media.

COVID-19 vaccine hesitants are divided about getting a vaccine. This group represents those who are most likely to choose “neutral” to getting the vaccine (79%) or putting their name on a list to get a vaccine (74%). This group is “sitting on the fence” and could be swayed either way.

Read more: COVID-19: four ways to respond to vaccine sceptics – and maybe even convince them

About 15% in this group have previously refused vaccination and a small minority (5%) have refused vaccination of their child. They are more likely to be female, young or middle aged, with low to moderate education levels, poor and Māori.

COVID-19 vaccine sceptics represent individuals who overwhelmingly say “no” to getting a vaccine (99%). About a third (35%) have previously refused vaccination and 18% have refused vaccination of their child. They strongly oppose any restrictions against individuals who refuse a COVID-19 vaccine if it were made mandatory. This group is likely to be female, older, poor, less educated, Māori and Pasifika.

Reaching vaccine hesistants and sceptics

Vaccine hesistants are the most important target group for a COVID-19 vaccination campaign as they are critical for “herd immunity”.

This group trusts information on social media, but has low levels of trust in mass media and health experts, thereby limiting the effectiveness of a mass media campaign to reach them.

Their key concerns include the rapid development and approval of the new vaccines, vaccine safety and effectiveness, and whether vaccination is actually needed at all. A social media campaign with information that addresses these concerns is likely to convince this group.

While vaccine sceptics make up only a small proportion of the population (12%), they are more likely to be from at-risk communities such as Māori and Pasifika. Our inability to convince members in this segment will not only hamper public health outcomes but further exacerbate historical health inequities, including a disproportional disease burden.

Read more: Research shows Māori are more likely to die from COVID-19 than other New Zealanders

The vaccine sceptics are more likely to trust information from family and friends. They are less likely to trust other sources of information, including mass media, social media and health experts. They report low trust in information on social media about COVID-19 and are more likely to describe it as fake.

A more localised communication campaign, through their trusted network of family and friends, is likely to be effective in reaching sceptics.

New Zealand has been a world leader in public health communication during the COVID-19 outbreak, ensuring the public understood and largely supported restrictions and adopted behaviours to prevent the spread of the virus.

An unprecedented scientific endeavour has resulted in the development and approval of a number of COVID-19 vaccines in a remarkably short time, within a year of the start of the pandemic. But this brings a new public health challenge — reaching that substantial proportion of the population that remains hesitant or sceptical about the safety and benefits of vaccination against COVID-19.

– ref. More than 1 in 3 New Zealanders remain hesitant or sceptical about COVID-19 vaccines. Here’s how to reach them – https://theconversation.com/more-than-1-in-3-new-zealanders-remain-hesitant-or-sceptical-about-covid-19-vaccines-heres-how-to-reach-them-156489

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yaqoot Fatima, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University

Adequate sleep is key to good health, well-being and proper functioning across all life stages but is especially critical for children. Poor sleep can inhibit rapid growth and development in early childhood.

And it’s not just about sleep duration; the time one goes to bed also plays an important role in the physical, emotional, and cognitive development of children.

A consistent early bedtime is especially important for young children transitioning from biphasic sleep (where children still nap during the day) to monophasic sleep (where sleep happens at night).

Late sleepers don’t always get the recommended amount of sleep but evidence also suggests late bedtime is associated with sleep quality problems and difficulty falling asleep.

All this can add up to concentration, memory, and behaviour issues in children.

An early bedtime is good for physical health, too

One study of low income preschool-aged children found not getting enough sleep was associated with a higher risk of obesity. A review of academic literature on the question found

Poor sleep is increasingly common in children and associations between short sleep duration in early childhood and obesity are consistently found.

It’s worth noting that most of the studies on this question are cross-sectional, which means they look at data from a population at one specific point in time. That has major limitations that make it hard to say poor sleep habits cause the higher obesity risk.

To know more, we need more longitudinal studies that examine change over time.

That said, emerging evidence from longitudinal studies supports the idea an early bedtime may be worth the battle. One longitudinal study found:

Preschool-aged children with early weekday bedtimes were half as likely as children with late bedtimes to be obese as adolescents. Bedtimes are a modifiable routine that may help to prevent obesity.

My own research, published last year with colleagues in the journal Acta Paediatrica, analysed four years of data from 1,250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged five to eight years old.

The results highlight that even after controlling sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, children who had consistently late bedtimes (after 9.30pm) were on average 1.5kg to 2.5kg heavier at follow up three years later than children who go to bed early (at around 7pm).

Nobody can yet say for sure what the exact relationship is between bedtime and obesity risk. Maybe it’s that staying up late provides more opportunities for eating junk food or drinking caffeinated drinks.

Or there could be more complex physiological factors. The body’s internal clock, which regulates sleep, also plays a crucial role in hormone secretion, glucose metabolism and energy balance.

How late is late?

Sleep habits are shaped by a range of biological and cultural factors. When parents set their child’s bedtime, they’re influenced by cultural norms, lifestyle and what they know about the importance of sleep.

There are clear guidelines for sleep duration for each age group, but the time a child should go to bed isn’t always as clearly defined. For a pre-schooler, I’d recommend a consistent bedtime between 7pm and 8pm to ensure adequate sleep (recognising, of course, that work and caring responsibilities can make this really difficult for some parents).

Develop an early bedtime routine for your child and try to stick to it, even when it’s “not a school night”. Irregular bedtimes disrupt natural body rhythms and, as many parents know from direct experience, can lead to behavioural challenges in children.

Early childhood is a critical time in which the foundations of life-long habits are built. Developing healthy sleep habits can set children on the right path for better future health and well-being.

– ref. For children, it’s not just about getting enough sleep. Bed time matters, too – https://theconversation.com/for-children-its-not-just-about-getting-enough-sleep-bed-time-matters-too-153301

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christina Hanna, Lecturer, Environmental Planning, University of Waikato

Despite living in dynamic environments and facing an uncertain future due to climate change, New Zealanders generally expect their land and property rights will endure indefinitely.

But little stays the same. As last week’s offshore earthquakes and tsunami alerts reminded us, our coasts and the people who live near them are vulnerable to a range of hazards. Such risks will only increase as sea level rises due to climate change.

The government has announced that the Resource Management Act will be replaced by three new laws, including a Managed Retreat and Climate Change Adaptation Act. The writing is on the wall: planners and communities need to prepare for change.

For those living in highly exposed places, managed retreat may be necessary to save lives and secure public safety.

These “managed retreats” — from low-lying shorelines vulnerable to rising sea level, areas that flood regularly and unstable or exposed land — may be a bitter pill to swallow. Especially so in the midst of a national housing crisis and a global pandemic.

But the impacts of climate change are already being felt, and will compound natural hazard risks well into the future. Some existing developments are already proving untenable, exposing people and the things they cherish to severe harm.

So it’s imperative to include the option of managed retreat in adaptation planning for the most at-risk communities.

What are managed retreats?

Basically, managed retreats involve the strategic relocation of people, assets and activities to reduce risk.

For obvious reasons, retreats require difficult sacrifices for individuals, families and communities. The process can involve a range of mechanisms, including providing risk maps, official notices on land information memorandums (LIMs), development restrictions and financial incentives to relocate.

Planners and academics have been calling for a national managed retreat strategy, and the law change provides a unique opportunity.

Read more: NZ’s Climate Change Commission needs to account for the huge potential health benefits of reducing emissions

Aside from compulsory acquisition powers used to deliver public works, Aotearoa New Zealand may be the first country to develop specific legislation for managed retreats. The world will be watching with interest.

Managing retreats that are sensitive to the dislocation of people from their homes, livelihoods, landscapes and culture is challenging. Developing the new legislation will involve difficult decisions about why, when, how and where retreats take place — and at whose cost.

Putting people first

Just how these retreats will be managed, however, is yet to be determined. Our latest research examines who manages retreats and how. It’s a timely cue to examine the broad policy options and planning implications.

The proposed legislation presents an opportunity to transform land use patterns in Aotearoa New Zealand. But as we have seen in Canterbury, Matatā and elsewhere, the way managed retreats are handled matters greatly to the people affected.

At present, local managed retreat interventions are risky – professionally, politically, financially, culturally and socially. The necessary planning frameworks and resources are seldom available to support effective and equitable outcomes.

Some communities exposed to hazards and climate perils also face the risk of maladaptation — paradoxically, their vulnerability is increased by inaction or misguided efforts.

Read more: Why we should release New Zealand’s strangled rivers to lessen the impact of future floods

Who manages retreats and how?

Our research distinguishes three approaches to making policy for a spectrum of possible retreats. Broadly speaking, these are:

1. government control: using legislation, standards, policies and regulations, central or local government may restrict certain developments or compulsorily acquire property to enforce retreat

2. co-operative managed retreats: collaborative decision-making and negotiation between government agencies and affected parties, using instruments such as opt-in buyouts, relocation subsidies or land swaps

3. unmanaged retreats: individual choices influenced by factors such as loss of insurance cover and other market changes, decisions not to invest more in a property or to sell it (potentially at a loss), or to remain in place and face the risk.

Using our framework, we consider the risks and implications of each form of retreat. We draw on decades of lessons from international practice in disaster resettlement and planned relocation.

Getting the law right

Fundamentally, we argue that facilitating co-operative managed retreats is preferable. This means people and communities are embedded in the retreat strategy design, decision-making and delivery.

Necessarily then, flexible, collaborative and fit-for-purpose policies and practices are important. To manage expectations around at-risk, transient and marginal land, regulation of new development or land use is also required (such as placing time limits on consents).

Read more: New Zealand’s COVID-19 stimulus is a ‘lost opportunity’ to move towards a low-emissions economy

Managed, co-operative and unmanaged retreats each have a role to play. But their associated practices and policy interventions must be strategically planned. To promote public safety, justice and equity, co-operation must be a central focus when managing the relocation of people.

Aotearoa New Zealand has an opportunity to foster long-term resilience in the face of climate change and many other land use challenges. Determining who manages retreats, how, and who pays is important work.

The shape of the new legislation — the processes and outcomes it encourages — will influence the lives and well-being of current and future generations.

– ref. When climate change and other emergencies threaten where we live, how will we manage our retreat? – https://theconversation.com/when-climate-change-and-other-emergencies-threaten-where-we-live-how-will-we-manage-our-retreat-156035

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frances Flanagan, Sydney Fellow, Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney

After heated criticism from several quarters, the federal government last month announced a meagre rise in the JobSeeker payment for people looking for work. But at just $25 more a week, the subsidy remains the second-lowest in the OECD.

The government also announced a hotline for employers to “dob in” unemployed people who reject “suitable work”. These reports will contribute evidence that may be used to reduce or stop payments to JobSeeker recipients.

As many have observed, it is a policy with all-too-familiar resonances. A pallet of punitive and stigmatising measures have been rolled out in liberal economies worldwide over the past 40 years. These include drug testing, cashless welfare cards, mandatory job training and a variety of “mutual obligation” requirements.

As many academics have argued, these measures have done much to inflict misery, and little to create jobs or foster a genuine sense of mutuality. They have also propped up the myth that individuals are overwhelmingly responsible for their own wagelessness, regardless of wider labour market conditions.

Has it always been this way?

Read more: First lift JobSeeker, then add on fully-funded unemployment insurance

A long history of coercing people into work

The idea that it is desirable to use the law to coerce people into employment relationships they do not wish to be in has a long history around the world.

To understand it, we need to look to the origins of both labour law and welfare law. The English parliament passed the 1351 Statute of Labourers in the wake of another plague – the Black Death. It required any able-bodied person below the age of 60 to accept any offer of work.

The Old Poor Laws, introduced some 250 years later, were a landmark in the early history of welfare provision. They granted parishes the power to offer support to able-bodied people on the condition they could demonstrate they were “deserving”: that is, neither idle, dissolute, lazy, of poor character nor prone to vice. Together, these feudal and early modern laws reflected and encoded the practice of scrutinising the “unwillingness” of the wageless to work.

As the historian John Murphy has argued, lawmakers in the Australian colonies were adamant the Australian “new world” would not reproduce the injustices of the old. The colonies vigorously rejected enacting any equivalent of the Poor Law. However, in the context of a sparsely inhabited continent afflicted by labour shortages, colonial laws concerning work were nevertheless highly coercive.

Read more: New finding: boosting JobSeeker wouldn’t keep Australians away from paid work

British master and servant legislation, which granted employers sweeping powers over employees for absconding, disloyalty and desertion, backed by criminal sanctions, were adopted with even harsher penalties in Australia than in the UK.

The NSW 1828 Servants and Laborers Act provided for up to six months’ imprisonment for absenteeism or desertion: double the penalty of the equivalent UK legislation. In the 19th century, employers didn’t “dob” on workers who declined a job. Rather, they dobbed on workers who left without permission.

In the early 20th century the state intervened in labour markets with a very different objective: to enshrine the pre-conditions of “civilisation”. Justice Higgins’ famous Harvester Judgment required minimum wages calculated on the basis of “the needs of the average employee, regarded as a human being living in a civilised community”, rather than the “higgling of the market”.

In addition to establishing the legal and economic institutions for a “wage earners’ welfare state”, the imperative to break with stigmatising traditions was expressed through campaigns to entrench welfare systems in Australia that did not depend on people proving their poverty and good character as a precondition to accessing collective funds.

Instead, reformers argued welfare should be organised around the principle of contributory insurance. This involved workers, employers and the state compulsorily saving for future needs. Under such a model (which Australia later embraced on a national scale for superannuation) funds could be accessed in times of need without the taint of “charity”.

Enter the Great Depression

These interwar campaigns failed on the whole, with Queensland the only state to pass an Unemployed Workers Insurance Act in 1922 under the leadership of “Red Ted” Theodore. As unemployment rates soared over 30%, the plausibility of insurance models as solution to large-scale social need, or a panacea for welfare stigma, faded and the spectre of “deservedness” in welfare provision returned.

Depression-era systems enabled Unemployment Relief Councils to offer “sustenance work” to men below the basic wage. They also offered forms of “relief” that hinged on proof they had not only applied for work but had moved across the district in pursuit of it. Where the master and servant laws had once functioned to keep workers in place, in the 1930s “track rations” policies kept workers on the move.

The passage of wartime emergency laws added a new dimension to the state’s willingness and powers to intervene in individual employment relationships. These laws were aimed at securing the production of munitions and essential supplies and services.

The Manpower Directorate, Women’s Employment Board and National Security (Employment) regulations were used to scrutinise and curtail the movement of skilled workers between jobs. They were also used to keep “desirable” employees with particular employers and in jobs deemed essential.

These initiatives were introduced against a backdrop of Keynesian economics, which would expand after the war and drive a commitment to full employment as an economic objective. They would also engender more generous welfare systems, funded from general revenue, which required the needy to show they were “capable and willing to undertake suitable work” with no time limit on benefits or property means test.

‘Dobbing in’ may not have the desired effect

The notion of enlisting employers to “dob in” people unwilling to enter an employment relationship is likely to be ineffective, given the levels of under-employment in the labour market and the negative response the measure received from some employer groups.

Read more: No, people aren’t unemployed because they’re lazy. We should stop teaching children myths about work

It is likely, too, to deepen social division and increase the potential for exploitation of already vulnerable people. It is an illiberal policy, philosophically at odds with the notion that the parties in labour markets should be free to enter and withdraw from contracts as they see fit.

By placing the policy within the longer context of Australia’s 20th-century history of flawed “bold experiments” in regulating work and welfare, though, we can also see there are alternatives to coercing people into employment relationships.

States can actively intervene in labour markets on a principled basis to promote secure work that meets human need. They can pass policies that are designed to ameliorate, rather than inflame, ideas of “deservedness”. They can actively intervene in labour markets on the basis of the pursuit of a wider social “mission”.

It is important not to romanticise these policy initiatives in Australian history. Each one of them simultaneously deepened processes of exclusion for some, while reconfiguring new possibilities of fair treatment for others. Nevertheless, in an age of rising inequality, social fragmentation and climate change, it is worth remembering these experiments, if only as a stimulus to boldly proposing new ones for our times.

– ref. Australia has a long history of coercing people into work. There are better options than ‘dobbing in’ – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-long-history-of-coercing-people-into-work-there-are-better-options-than-dobbing-in-156296

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Burrowes, Senior Researcher, University of Auckland

International Women’s Day celebrates women’s achievements and raises awareness of the continuing mission towards gender equality. So it’s a good time to be reminded we still need to correct decades — centuries even — of gender bias in medicine and medical research.

It’s no secret men and women are different. It’s why we have a whole genre of books and jokes about why “men are from Mars and women are from Venus”.

Mentally, physically and biologically, men and women are simply not built the same way. It sounds obvious, but we have only really begun to understand why.

These differences have not been reflected accurately in the field of medicine. Women’s health has too often been considered a niche area — even though it involves roughly 50% of the world’s population.

Under-researched and under-diagnosed

What we do know is that being female puts us at higher risk of some of the most challenging conditions. Autoimmune diseases, for example, affect approximately 8% of the global population, but 78% of those affected are women.

Females are three times more likely than males to develop rheumatoid arthritis and four times more likely to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system.

Women make up two-thirds of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and are three times more likely to have a heart attack than men. Women are at least twice as likely to suffer chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic Lyme disease.

As author Maya Dusenbery made clear in her book “Doing Harm”, these conditions are under-researched and often go undiagnosed and untreated.

Different sex, different symptoms

Heart disease is another example where sex — or perhaps sexism — stills plays a huge determining factor. Women are less likely to experience the “classic” symptoms of a heart attack — symptoms that were discovered in research led by men, in which most of the participants were men.

Women’s most common heart attack symptom, as with men, is chest pain or discomfort. But women are more likely than men to experience some of the other common symptoms, particularly shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and back or jaw pain.

Read more: Women’s health is better when women have more control in their society

But because the diagnosis method still favours male biology, many women experience a delayed diagnosis or a misdiagnosis.

On average, women are diagnosed with heart disease seven to ten years later than men. This often results in other chronic diseases being prevalent by the time of the diagnosis.

Male bias affects clinical studies

The reasons for women being this over-representated in some conditions is not clear. But genetic and hormonal factors are likely to be involved. Historically, however, medical research has often excluded women.

In 1977 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended women of childbearing age be excluded from clinical research studies. This was to protect the most “vulnerable” populations — unborn children — following the thalidomide scandal.

Read more: Women have heart attacks too, but their symptoms are often dismissed as something else

Another reason given for excluding women in clinical studies is that, depending on where a woman is in her menstrual cycle, the variation of her hormones “complicates” the results. This variability would mean more subjects were needed in clinical trials, thereby increasing costs.

Male-only studies were justified by a belief that what would work for men would also work for women. This erroneous assumption has had catastrophic results.

Every cell in a person’s body has a sex. This means diseases and medications used to treat them will affect women differently — as we have learned, often at a cost to their health.

Eight out of ten of the drugs removed from the US market between 1997 and 2000 were withdrawn because of side effects that occurred mainly or exclusively in women. Between 2004 and 2013, US women suffered more than 2 million drug-related adverse events, compared with 1.3 million for men.

Time to end the gender divide

The lack of recognition of sex differences in biology and medicine is a huge issue research has only recently begun to rectify.

In 1997, the FDA published a rule requiring manufacturers to show evidence of how their drug is safe and affected by age, sex and race.

When last measured in depth in 2016, it was clear there had been significant progress, with women accounting for roughly half of the participants in some clinical trials funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Read more: NZ’s Climate Change Commission needs to account for the huge potential health benefits of reducing emissions

Scientists are now required to account for the possible role of sex as a biological variable in both animal and human studies.

But the lack of funding for women’s health remains a huge issue. According to earlier analysis from the UK, less than 2.5% of publicly-funded research was dedicated to reproductive health. Yet one in three women will suffer from a reproductive or gynaecological health issue.

This means roughly 16% of the population will experience an issue that receives only 2.5% of the annual research budget. Although policies are being implemented to help address the huge gender divide in medicine, there is clearly still a long way to go.

– ref. Gender bias in medicine and medical research is still putting women’s health at risk – https://theconversation.com/gender-bias-in-medicine-and-medical-research-is-still-putting-womens-health-at-risk-156495

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meru Sheel, Epidemiologist | Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University

COVID-19 vaccination is rolling out across Australia. So health authorities are keen to dispel myths about the vaccines, including any impact on COVID testing.

Do the vaccines give you COVID, or make you test positive for COVID? Does the vaccine affect other tests? Do we still need to get COVID tested if we have symptoms, even after getting the shot? And will we still need COVID testing once more of the population gets vaccinated?

We look at the evidence to answer five common questions about the impact of COVID vaccines on testing.

Read more: Do I need to register for a COVID vaccine? How will I know when it’s my turn? Vaccine rollout questions answered

1. Will the vaccine give me COVID?

The short answer is “no”. That’s because the vaccines approved for use so far in Australia and elsewhere don’t contain live COVID virus.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine contains an artificially generated portion of viral mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid). This carries the specific genetic instructions for your body to make the coronavirus’s “spike protein”, against which your body mounts a protective immune response.

The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a different technology. It packages viral DNA into a viral vector “carrier” based on a chimpanzee adenovirus. When this is delivered into your arm, the DNA prompts your body to produce the spike protein, again stimulating an immune response.

Any vaccine side-effects, such as fever or feeling fatigued, are usually mild and temporary. These are signs the vaccines are working to boost your immune system, rather than signs of COVID itself. These symptoms are also common after routine vaccines.

2. Will the COVID vaccine make me test positive?

No, a COVID vaccine will not affect the results of a diagnostic COVID test.

The current gold-standard diagnostic test is known as nucleic acid PCR testing. This looks for the mRNA (genetic material) of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This is a marker of current infection.

This is the test the vast majority of people have when they line up at a drive-through testing clinic, or attend a COVID clinic at their local hospital.

Yes, the Pfizer vaccine contains mRNA. But the mRNA it uses is only a small part of the entire viral RNA. It also cannot make copies of itself, which would be needed for it to be in sufficient quantity to be detected. So it cannot be detected by a PCR test.

The AstraZeneca vaccine also only contains part of the DNA but is inserted in an adenovirus carrier that cannot replicate so cannot give you infection or a positive PCR test.

Read more: How mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna work, why they’re a breakthrough and why they need to be kept so cold

3. How about antibody testing?

While PCR testing is used to look for current infection, antibody testing — also known as serology testing — picks up past infections.

Laboratories look to see if your immune system has raised antibodies against the coronavirus, a sign your body has been exposed to it. As it takes time for antibodies to develop, testing positive with an antibody test may indicate you were infected weeks or months ago.

But your body also produces antibodies as a response to vaccination. That’s the way it can recognise SARS-CoV-2, the next time it meets it, to protect you from severe COVID.

So as COVID vaccines are rolled out, and people develop a vaccine-induced antibody response, it may become difficult to differentiate between someone who has had COVID in the past and someone who was vaccinated a month ago. But this will depend on the serology test used.

Read more: Antibody tests: to get a grip on coronavirus, we need to know who’s already had it

The good news is that antibody testing is not nearly as common as PCR testing. And it’s only ordered under limited and rare circumstances.

For instance, when someone tests positive with PCR, but they are a false positive due to the characteristics of the test, or have fragments of virus lingering in the respiratory tract from an old infection, public health experts might request an antibody test to see whether that person was infected in the past. They might also order an antibody test during contact tracing of cases with an unknown source of infection.

Read more: Why can’t we use antibody tests for diagnosing COVID-19 yet?

4. If I get vaccinated, do I still need a COVID test if I have symptoms?

Yes, we will continue to test for COVID as long as the virus is circulating anywhere in the world.

Even though the COVID vaccines are looking promising in preventing people from getting seriously sick or dying, they won’t provide 100% protection.

Real-world data suggests some vaccinated people can still catch the virus, but they usually only get mild disease. We are unsure whether vaccinated people will be able to potentially pass it to others, even if they don’t have any symptoms. So it’s important people continue to get tested.

Furthermore, not everyone will be eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. For instance, in Australia, current guidelines exclude people under 16 years of age, and those who are allergic to ingredients in the vaccine. And although pregnant women are not ruled out from receiving the vaccine, it is not routinely recommended. This means a proportion of the population will remain susceptible to catching the virus.

We also are unsure about how effective vaccines will be against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. So we will continue to test to ensure people are not infected with these strains.

Read more: UK, South African, Brazilian: a virologist explains each COVID variant and what they mean for the pandemic

We know testing, detecting new cases early and contact tracing are the core components of the public health response to COVID, and will continue to be a priority from a public health perspective.

Minimum numbers of daily COVID tests are also needed so we can be confident the virus is not circulating in the community. As an example, New South Wales aims for 8,000 or more tests a day to maintain this peace of mind.

Continued vigilance and high rates of testing for COVID will also be important as we enter the flu season. That’s because the only way to differentiate between COVID and influenza (or any other respiratory infection) is via testing.

5. Will testing for COVID stop as time goes on?

It is unlikely our approach to COVID testing will change in the immediate future. However, as COVID vaccines are rolled out and since COVID is likely to become endemic and stay with us for a long time, the acute response phase to the pandemic will end.

So COVID testing may become part of managing other infectious diseases and part of how we respond to other ongoing health priorities.

Read more: Coronavirus might become endemic – here’s how

– ref. Will the COVID vaccine make me test positive for the coronavirus? 5 questions about vaccines and COVID testing answered – https://theconversation.com/will-the-covid-vaccine-make-me-test-positive-for-the-coronavirus-5-questions-about-vaccines-and-covid-testing-answered-155958

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Carr, Senior Lecturer, Environment and Society Group, UNSW

Days after US rioters stormed Capitol Hill in January, a manatee was found in a Florida river with the word “TRUMP” scraped into its back. The aftermath of the disturbing incident revealed a pervasive left-right divide that has long plagued environmental debate.

Polarised views dominate discussion on critical issues such as climate crisis and biodiversity protection. Typically, the left calls for more environmental protections, and the right claims these protections threaten economic prosperity or individual rights.

The election of the Biden administration raised hopes of a new dawn in environmental protections. Our research, however, suggests entrenched left-right views will continue to stymie effective environmental action in the United States – just as they do in Australia.

That’s because focusing on localised protections or individual rights leaves intact a cultural blind spot that conceals systemic issues threatening nature. Tackling these issues requires confronting environmental damage to which we all contribute.

The manatee incident

The Florida manatee is a large marine mammal, and one of the original species listed as endangered under the 1966 US Endangered Species Act. The animals are similar to dugongs found in Australia.

The January 11 manatee incident was quickly co-opted into the US political debate. Some on the left accused Trump supporters of inflicting the damage. Right-wing observers downplayed the seriousness of the incident and suggested claims of abuse were manufactured by the left out of hatred for Trump.

Others framed the incident as typical of stereotypes of Florida as home to reactionary politics and “trashy” culture.

It may be tempting to dismiss the incident as unique to the Trump era or Florida itself. But doing so risks ignoring important lessons. Our research shows how framing such events as political left-right issues prevents us from recognising the deeper causes of environmental crises.

Read more: Dugongs: looking to the gentle sea creature’s past may guard its future

The bigger picture

Media and politicians in the US and elsewhere often characterise the environmental threat as one posed by individuals. But in most cases, including manatees, threats extend far beyond a single bad act.

Before colonisation, wetlands accounted for up to two-thirds of Florida’s land mass. But rampant coastal development over the past 150 years destroyed more than 60% of these wetlands – dismantling habitat and preventing manatees from reaching warm springs needed to survive winter. Also, human climate disruption has led to frequent severe “red tide” algal blooms, which poison manatees.

But these broader threats to manatee survival are largely ignored by news media, environmental actors and even protection laws. Instead, the left tends to focus on individual threats, and the right on individual human or economic rights.

For example, in response to January’s incident, local news outlets published calls by environmental advocates to ban human contact with manatees. This approach echoes existing state and federal laws that prohibit people from harassing, hurting or killing manatees, but fail to protect the ecosystems manatees rely upon to survive.

Still, such manatee protection efforts meet backlash from the right. For example, in 2017, right-wing lobbyists successfully pressured the US government to downgrade the status of manatees from “endangered” to “threatened”, thus weakening manatee protections. The move was motivated by a desire to protect individual property and economic rights – in this case, development in Florida’s wetlands.

Clearly, manatees – and other vulnerable species – are threatened by the tireless expansion of human impact on every aspect of the ecosystems they need to survive. This includes our transport systems, housing, energy generation and over-consumption.

But debate and action on such issues tends to ignore the interconnected threats. For example, as coastal development in Florida destroyed warm-water springs, manatees have become reliant on warm waste water flowing from nearby power plants. Conservationists successfully sued to have manatee sanctuaries created around these artificial discharges, despite the broader damage the industries wreak on the planet.

Similar framing is seen in Australia where, for example, battles over protected marine zones largely revolve around how much commercial fishing is allowed. This obscures other systemic threats to oceans that threaten not just fish numbers, but the oceans’ abilities to support all life – including climate disruption, agricultural runoff, water pollution, and overfishing.

Environmental well-being requires reconsidering how our societies function. Instead, debate is often fixated on less central issues, such as how well or poorly our environmental efforts compare internationally.

Read more: Biden has pledged to advance environmental justice – here’s how the EPA can start

Inextricably linked

As COVID-19 has shown, humans and our systems are inseparable from nature. But global left-right environmental debate largely ignores this.

Instead, there’s a widely held belief humans are separate from, and even superior to, nature. This “human exceptionalism” can be traced back to Enlightenment thought and Judeo-Christian tradition that privilege humans above other species, and the planet as a whole.

As a result of this blind spot, personal economic opportunity is often seen as more important than ecological balance. And those who seek to protect nature often mobilise to protect specific areas or species from a narrow threat. This is compounded by an absence of institutional systems to address intertwined issues threatening large ecosystems.

Looking past the false separation of humans from nature is necessary, but confronting. It means seeing, questioning, and addressing the systems many of us – both on the left and right – take as a given.

– ref. A manatee with ‘TRUMP’ scraped into its back was itself disturbing. But it reflects a deeper environmental problem – https://theconversation.com/a-manatee-with-trump-scraped-into-its-back-was-itself-disturbing-but-it-reflects-a-deeper-environmental-problem-154189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcia Devlin, Adjunct Professor, Victoria University

Australian university leaders are nearly three times more likely to be a man than a woman.

Of 37 public university chancellors, just 10 are women (27%) and 27 (73%) are men. It’s exactly the same for vice-chancellors: 10 are women and 27 are men.

Together, this means men hold 54 of the 74 top jobs in Australian higher education.

Read more: Most of Australia’s uni leaders are white, male and grey. This lack of diversity could be a handicap

Last year presented a big opportunity for progress towards gender equity among university leaders. During 2020, vice-chancellors at 15 of Australia’s 37 public universities either announced their departure from the role, or actually left. This move of 41% of the vice-chancellors in a single year provided the best opportunity for improving gender equity in living memory.

Unfortunately, Australian university councils, which appoint vice-chancellors, did not take up the opportunity. The gender ratio didn’t change at all.

To date, women have been appointed in just four of the 15 (27%) interim or ongoing replacements made. Two of these four women moved from one vice-chancellor position to another. In 11 of the 15 announced vice-chancellor replacements – 73% of cases – a man won the role.

Men also dominate the upper levels of Australian academia. The latest available figures (from 2019) show:

• 86% more men than women at associate professor and professor levels D and E (10,363 men, 5,562 women)

• 11% more men than women at senior lecturer level C (6,355 men, 5,724 women)

• 25% more women than men at lecturer level B (7,428 men, 9,253 women)

• 15% more women than men at associate lecturer level A (4,426 men and 5,093 women).

Overall, the numbers of men and women employed as academics aren’t very different. In 2019, Australian universities employed 54,204 full-time and fractional full-time academics: 28,572 men (53%) and 25,632 (47%) women. It’s the seniority of the positions they hold that differs starkly.

These figures do not include casual staff.

Isn’t the gender balance improving?

Optimists often assure me leadership gender equity is improving. Granted, the percentage of female chancellors in Australian has increased in the past five years. In 2016, WomenCount reported 15% of Australian university chancellors were women. While the increase is positive, it remains disappointing that women occupy only about one-quarter of these increasingly powerful and important roles.

The shift in senior academic ranks has also been slow. In 2009, 73.5% of professors were men. Between 2009 and 2019, the proportion of female professors has risen from 26.5% to 35%. That’s an improvement of less than one percentage point per year on average.

At this rate, it will be the late 2030s before women make up half of the professoriate in Australia.

Read more: Female leaders are missing in academia

Why does gender inequity persist?

The most common reason put forward for gender inequity is related to women’s role in childbearing. But the fact that only women can grow, birth and breastfeed babies does not, on its own, explain why there are 86% more male associate professors and professors than women in these roles, nor why there are nearly three times more male than female vice-chancellors and chancellors. After all, these womanly activities take a relatively short amount of time and most women I know can skilfully multi-task while pregnant and breastfeeding.

However, the fact that women take on the bulk of child-raising duties might help explain the inequities. Of course, people of every gender can equally well raise children. But they don’t – it’s mostly left to the women.

Read more: Flexible work arrangements help women, but only if they are also offered to men

For women, the results of this unequal sharing of responsibility include:

• less time and energy for academic pursuits

• more teaching (often) and less time for research and publishing

• lower academic and leadership profiles (usually)

• fewer opportunities to engage in activities that count for promotion and for senior leadership roles.

Of course, not all women have children. And those that do find that they grow up, learn to feed, dress and eventually support themselves and move out of home. Is it also possible that Australian university culture and practices privilege men’s careers and hold back women’s advancement?

University decision-makers, including promotion committees, might well favour men because of:

• relatively uninterrupted and neat career trajectories

• relatively greater freedom to engage in research and publishing without the disadvantages of part-time employment, never mind the mid-afternoon school run

• more easily quantified outputs

• more frequent opportunities to lead

• the cumulative achievements, profile and trajectory that come with all of the above.

Read more: How COVID is widening the academic gender divide

Let’s shake up the status quo

Most universities try to redress gender inequity. Committees, agenda items, plans, targets and mentoring programs abound. But evidently these efforts aren’t working.

After many years in executive and governance leadership, I continue to observe decision-makers often thinking of men first, or only of men, when searching for suitable leadership candidates.

On the rarer occasions that women are offered leadership opportunities, they have to adopt the “right” style and carefully balance gravitas and humility. They must learn how to perform gender judo and ensure they don’t fall into the success versus likeability conundrum that Facebook chief operating officer and author Sheryl Sandberg made famous.

In short, to become academic leaders, women must skilfully navigate the unconscious bias and sexism that permeate universities.

While shifts are occurring, they are painfully slow, as the gender data over the past decade and predicted trajectories show. Might it be time for women (and enlightened men) to take matters into their own hands to begin to undermine the status quo? I think so – so I’ve written a book that proposes techniques to adopt to these ends.

What will you do to contribute to greater gender equity?

– ref. No change at the top for university leaders as men outnumber women 3 to 1 – https://theconversation.com/no-change-at-the-top-for-university-leaders-as-men-outnumber-women-3-to-1-154556

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Duffy, Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University

The New South Wales Education Department said last week said it would trial a program to hand out free pads and tampons in schools. Department secretary Mark Scott said:

We are developing work on a pilot program around this and details will be emerging on that shortly.

In a recent Australian study, more than one-third of young women said they missed at least one class, either at school or university, in the past three months due to menstrual symptoms, including pain and fatigue.

Despite the fact menstruation can have a significant effect on around 50% of a school’s population, access to period products (such as pads and tampons) is not yet universal. Not even in Australia.

Young women are missing school because of this. This affects their mental health as well as their ability to participate fully in life.

Missing out on education

Period poverty is the lack of access to sanitary products, menstrual hygiene education, toilets, hand-washing facilities and waste management.

It’s a a problem that has a greater impact on women who are already marginalised. Many young women in remote Indigenous Australian communities are not attending school for several days each month during menstruation.

Research suggests this is due to the high costs of feminine hygiene products, embarrassment and overcrowded bathroom facilities.

Read more: Indigenous girls missing school during their periods: the state of hygiene in remote Australia

While typically thought of as only physiological, periods and menstrual cycles are tied to psychological health. A lack of sanitary products can bring about feelings of profound shame and embarrassment.

Period poverty in developed countries is associated with a lower quality of life, poor self-esteem and mental-health issues.

While there is no Australia data on how many women are affected, a sample of college women in the United States found 14.2% experienced period poverty in the past year. An additional 10% experienced it every month.

Worryingly, nearly half of the respondents experiencing period poverty reported symptoms consistent with moderate to severe depression.

And having poor access to sanitation products during adolescence has long-term mental health effects throughout a woman’s life.

Seeing red: outrage about periods

Research has found stigma and taboo about menstruation continue to be a problem. Many girls feel embarrassed to talk about it or ask for help.

Read more: 3 out of 10 girls skip class because of painful periods. And most won’t talk to their teacher about it

Menstruation is frequently framed as troublesome, compared to the “exciting and powerful” bodily changes male teenagers go through when students are taught about them in sex education.

Society’s repulsion towards menstruation can be seen in ads for menstrual products that, until only recently, did not show blood. And when they did, it was met with considerable social outrage.

However, attitudes are starting to shift.

Since 2015, Australian charity Share the Dignity has been working to reduce the impact of period poverty by installing vending machines that dispense free period products in schools, homeless shelters and other locations.

Read more: Period poverty: why one in ten young women struggle to afford pads and tampons

In 2019, Australia removed the GST on period products. And this year Isobel Marshall was named the 2021 Young Australian of the Year in recognition of her work to fight menstrual stigma and period poverty.

But there’s more we can do.

Free period products in schools

Scotland was the first country in the world to make period products free to everyone who needed them in 2020.

New Zealand has announced the rollout of free period products in schools nationwide from June this year.

Victoria has installed dispensing machines for period products in every government school. And South Australia recently announced it would provide free sanitary products to all female students in year 5 and above.

South Australian Education Minister John Gardner has said:

We want to ensure that no girl or young woman in South Australia is missing school because they don’t have access to sanitary products.

This International Women’s Day it’s time to rethink menstrual education in schools to destigmatise periods, encourage young women to seek help, and put access to period products for all Australians on the agenda.

– ref. Imagine having your period and no money for pads or tampons. Would you still go to school? – https://theconversation.com/imagine-having-your-period-and-no-money-for-pads-or-tampons-would-you-still-go-to-school-156570

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastien Darchen, Senior Lecturer in Planning, The University of Queensland

Electronic music is the fifth-most-popular music genre globally. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for the electronic music industry. Its estimated value fell from US$7.3 billion in 2019 to US$3.3 billion in 2020.

Hundreds of electronic festivals around the world have been cancelled. Some events have gone underground. In one case, more than 1,200 people were charged over an illegal rave party in Brittany that violated France’s COVID restrictions.

Electronic dance music uses specific spaces in a city, so it’s heavily affected by both cultural and planning policies. Our new book, Electronic Cities, studies these scenes. The contributors focus on 18 cities across the world as case studies in the development of electronic music.

The world of DJs has been studied before, but not the impacts of city policies on such a global scale. The book shows electronic music is not well integrated in cultural policies and gets little support. Music city policies often do not include this music genre.

Live venues are often not well protected by planning frameworks. This puts underground scenes that rely on small clubs at risk.

In Australia, we have seen some positive strategies, such as Agent of Change in Victoria, to protect inner-city live venues. Overall, though, electronic music is not well integrated in city policies.

The rise of a global phenomenon

Electronic music has grown from its origins in composers’ experimentation in the 1950s to encompass as many as 153 different genres. These range from commercial dance music and film soundtracks to niche/underground electronic music.

Broadly speaking, we can make a distinction between electronic dance music (EDM), also known as club music and made for dancing, and the more downtempo, conceptual intelligent dance music (IDM) made for listening at home.

Underground styles like acid techno are created by DJs, rather than musicians/producers, and are connected to specific clubs and audiences.

Australian dance music has been driven by an attitude of DIY self-reliance. Local producers such as Flume, Alison Wonderland, Will Sparks and Nervo have had international success.

All these different styles are sometimes grouped under the label of “electronic dance music culture”.

What role do cities have?

The first hubs for electronic music were in the US (Chicago and Detroit) and Germany (Dusseldorf and Berlin). Today, the culture has a global spread. Our book Electronic Cities analyses emerging electronic dance music cultures in places like Shenzhen in China, Tehran in Iran and Accra in Ghana.

Cities have used the music as a tool for city branding, to promote international tourism and to develop nightlife economies. Techno Week in Detroit, for instance, is a major drawcard for the city. In Cluj-Napoca, Romania, the Untold EDM Festival has been central to a strategy to attract tourists to this rural area.

Although some governments have embraced the industry, it has also suffered from official neglect. In large cities, small underground clubs, such as the former Club 414 in Brixton, are constantly under threat from redevelopment. These clubs have unique historic and cultural value but are not well protected by planning regulations.

What next?

Musician and record producer Mark Reeder lives in Berlin, a world centre for clubbing. He has seen the disruptions caused by the pandemic unfold. In an interview for Electronic Cities, he said:

This is the turning point that I thought would eventually happen. After 30 years of techno, it was on the brink. I believed something new was on the horizon. Obviously, I didn’t think it would be exactly like this.

Paul Curtis, the manager of Australian band Regurgitator, which straddles punk rock and electronica, had a similar vision:

We’d already been thinking for the last bunch of years – how the hell do we continue to do what we do in a world that we have to change?

The band had been operating for some time as a kind of small-scale economy, with sustainability as a focus. The collapse of venues in the wake of COVID forced some of their plans to change, but they started to rethink options.

Curtis was puzzled by the attitude of some music business colleagues:

They were saying, ‘As soon as this is over, and we get back to normal’, and I’m thinking, well that’s just delusion.

Curtis used the pandemic quiet to finish a live concert film of the band. He has been distributing it through independent cinemas and music venues that have geared up for screenings.

Australia responded to the economic impacts of the pandemic by introducing the JobKeeper payment to help businesses retain staff. But many venues and most artists and arts workers were ineligible.

Artists globally had similar experiences. In Helsinki, Finland, as Giacomo Botta explains in Electronic Cities, public support during the pandemic went only to recognised electronic dance music organisations. More marginal and underground communities, often most affected by the pandemic, were ignored.

On a more positive note, Sara Ross, speaking as part of a panel at CTM Festival 2021, explained that switching to online platforms such as Twitch – usually used by gamers – might help Toronto DJs widen their audience.

Reeder reflects on Berlin and what the future might look like:

I think this situation is having a profound effect on the way people consume contemporary music and especially what we perceived as the club scene.

He notes the desperation of DJs streaming from home, and the emphasis on nostalgia – “sounds of the past becoming the sounds of the future”.

– ref. Electronic cities: between COVID and gentrification, dance music is struggling to find its groove again – https://theconversation.com/electronic-cities-between-covid-and-gentrification-dance-music-is-struggling-to-find-its-groove-again-149168

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Associate Professor in Sociology and Co-Director of The Policy Lab, The University of Melbourne

Flexible workplace policies designed to improve gender gaps in employment and pay might actually make things worse for women.

Flexible work has been on offer to both men and women in many companies for decades. However, it is usually women who are in non-standard employment such as part-time work, often to meet the demands of children, sick parents or partners needing extra care.

Flexible arrangements might support women in maintaining a work-life balance. But policies that make it easier to transition to a part-time job or take leave may actually be weakening their position in the labour market and their lifetime earnings potential, therefore widening gender gaps in pay.

This highlights the need for equal policies for women and men.

COVID-19 and the labour market

The world changed under COVID-19 and the movement towards more flexible work may be one of the silver linings of the pandemic.

Read more: COVID forced Australian fathers to do more at home, but at the same cost mothers have long endured

This International Women’s Day (March 8), we are in a unique position to tap into the learnings from the COVID-19 lockdowns, during which many men and women were working from home and sharing housework, home-schooling and childcare responsibilities.

Research shows Australian fathers stepped into more involved roles in the household during the lockdowns and have maintained higher levels of involvement in housework and childcare as things return to normal.

Job flexibility and gender pay gap

New research from the Melbourne Institute suggests flexible work conditions such as part-time hours could be a driving factor in the career decisions of women, but not men, and a key reason why the gender divide in employment is not narrowing.

Gender differences in labour force participation, wages and working hours in Australia are very similar to those in the Netherlands, so a study from there offers valuable insights for policymakers in Australia.

Researchers (including one of us, Jordy Meekes) used data from Statistics Netherlands to analyse how men and women respond to job loss.

The study found women remained unemployed for longer than men. When they did find new jobs, women also experienced a larger reduction in working hours than men, which reduced their annual earnings.

It appears women tend to put more emphasis on job flexibility than men, an explanation for why it is hard for women to return to the workforce. Women may even be willing to pass up job opportunities in favour of the flexible work conditions they rely on to balance work and family life.

Women remain largely responsible for the organisational and physical work of making sure kids are completing homework, lunches are prepared and attending numerous after-school activities.

Since work and school schedules are seldom aligned, someone has to do the juggle. To keep the family humming, mothers spend more time on housework and care and less time on employment after the birth of the first child.

Part-time mothers

The career penalty for women that comes with having a child in the current system is felt long beyond the period of maternity leave.

It is commonly acceptable for women to return to work in a part-time capacity. And it is often women who are culturally and socially expected to use flexible conditions to leave work and care for a sick child, for example. Less so for men.

The Melbourne Institute study found men who worked part-time in their previous role took longer to secure another job and were more likely to have to take a pay cut than men who worked full-time.

Men who previously worked part-time earned on average 10% less in the new job. This finding suggests employers attach a penalty to part-time work for men, explained by the fact it is relatively uncommon for men.

Equal policies for women and men

Our beliefs about gender norms are shifting but this is not reflected in workplace and government policies on paper or in practice.

Read more: That extra you’re about to get in super, most of it will come from you, but don’t expect the ads to tell you that

A review of existing policies is an important step in determining how suitable workplace policies are to support all employees.

Having written policies to support diversity and inclusion or flexible work practices is positive but it is not a sign of success. Particularly if, in practice, only a small number of employees can avail of the benefits – and at what cost?

The COVID-19 lockdowns, while challenging for many, have given us an insight into what flexibility could truly look like for men and women alike.

– ref. Flexible work arrangements help women, but only if they are also offered to men – https://theconversation.com/flexible-work-arrangements-help-women-but-only-if-they-are-also-offered-to-men-155882

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dawn LaValle Norman, Research Fellow, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University

When we conjure up ancient philosophers the image that springs to mind might be a bald Socrates discoursing with beautiful young men in the sun, or a scholarly Aristotle lecturing among cool columns.

But what about Aspasia, the foreign mistress of the foremost politician in Athens who gave both political and erotic advice? Or Sosipatra, mystic, mother and Neoplatonist who was a more popular teacher than her husband, Eustathius?

Women also shaped the development of philosophy. Although their writings, by and large do not survive, their verbal teaching made a significant impact on their contemporaries, and their voices echo through the ages.

More than two millennia later, intelligent, verbal women still struggle to have their own voices heard. So here are six ancient female philosophers you should know about.

Read more: How women historians smashed the glass ceiling

1. Aspasia of Miletus

Aspasia of Miletus (most active around 400 BCE) was the most famous woman in Classical Athens — or should we say infamous? Although a foreigner, she became the mistress of Pericles, the leader of Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.

She was not only remembered for her captivating beauty, but also for her captivating mind. Socrates himself called Aspasia his teacher and relates he learned from her how to construct persuasive speeches. After all, he tells us, she wrote them for Pericles.

She plays a verbal role in at least three philosophical dialogues written by students of Socrates: Plato’s Menexenus and the fragmentary Aspasia dialogues by Aeschines and Antisthenes.

2. Clea

Clea (most active around 100 CE) was a priestess at Delphi — a highly esteemed political and intellectual role in the ancient world. The religious practitioners at the shrine received frequent requests from world leaders for divine advice about political matters. Clea was part of this political-religious system, but she believed in the primary importance of philosophy.

She found many opportunities for in-depth philosophical conversations with Plutarch, the most famous intellectual of his time. Plutarch tells us in the prefaces to On the Bravery of Women and On Isis and Osiris how these invigorating conversations on death, virtue and religious history inspired his own work.

Read more: Hidden women of history: the priestess Pythia at the Delphic Oracle, who spoke truth to power

3. Thecla

When she first appears on the scene in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Thecla (most active around 1st century CE) is leading a normal middle class life, sequestered at home and about to make an advantageous marriage. But leaning out of her balcony, she hears the dynamic preaching of Paul and decides on a radically different path.

She follows Paul around, resists a variety of amorous advances and survives being thrown to carnivorous seals in the arena. Finally, she is confirmed as a teacher in her own right and begins an illustrious career. Although it’s been speculated Thecla never really existed, her legend inspired many women to pursue a life of philosophy.

Some 250 years later, Methodius of Olympus wrote a philosophical dialogue full of women, with Thecla as the star participant, and Macrina (see below) was given a family nickname of Thecla, inspired by her philosophical and religious mission.

4. Sosipatra

Sosipatra (most active around 4th century CE) lived the dream: she had a successful teaching career along with a content family life. After an education in mysticism by foreigners, Sosipatra became a respected teacher in the Neoplatonic tradition, interpreting difficult texts and mediating divine knowledge.

She was surrounded by male experts, one of whom was her husband Eustathius. But according to Eunapius’ biography in his Lives of the Philosophers, her fame was greater than any of theirs, and students far preferred her inspiring teaching.

5. Macrina the Younger

Macrina (circa 330-379 CE) was the oldest of ten in an expansive, influential well-educated Christian family in Cappadocia.

She kept the family together through her sharp mind, devout soul and strong will, ultimately transforming her ancestral estate into a successful community of male and female ascetics.

Her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, commemorated her wisdom both in a biography Life of Macrina and also in a philosophical dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection.

The latter depicted a conversation about death between the siblings as Macrina lay dying, in which she displays wide knowledge in philosophy, scripture and the physical sciences.

6. Hypatia of Alexandria

Most famous for her dramatic death at the hands of a Christian mob, Hypatia (circa 355–415 CE) was a Neoplatonic teacher admired for her mathematical and astronomical works.

One of her successful students, the Christian bishop Synesius, wrote glowing letters to her, exchanging information not only about philosophy but also about obscure mathematical instruments.

She edited her father Theon’s astronomical commentary, which he acknowledged at publication.

Recalling the wisdom of ancient women both expands our view of history and reminds us of the gendered elements of modern complex thought.

This is particularly true in the field of philosophy, which consistently rates as one of the most gender-imbalanced in the humanities in modern universities.

The ancient world found space to include women’s voices in philosophy, and so must we.

Further reading: for Aspasia: Plato’s Menexenus and Plutarch’s Life of Pericles; for Clea: Plutarch’s On the Bravery of Women and On Isis and Osiris; for Thecla: the anonymously written The Acts of Paul and Thecla and Methodius’ Symposium; for Sosipatra: Eunapius’ Lives of the Philosophers; for Hypatia: the letters of Synesius of Cyrene and Socrates Scholasticus’ Church History.

– ref. Wise women: 6 ancient female philosophers you should know about – https://theconversation.com/wise-women-6-ancient-female-philosophers-you-should-know-about-156033