Australian Girls Research Articles

Staff perceptions of support for early menarche in Australian primary schools: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT The age of the onset of menstruation, termed menarche, has been declining for decades worldwide. Approximately 12% of Australian girls reach menarche between eight to 11 years of age. Current health and physical education subject guidelines from the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority state that puberty education should be introduced to students between year levels five to six (ages 10–12) when many have already begun puberty. To explore how girls experiencing early menarche are currently supported in Australian primary schools, semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 15 primary school staff from separate schools, including teachers, principals, a school services officer, and a school counsellor. Thematic analysis identified three main themes, (1) the prevalence of deficit models of early menarche and children’s capacity to know; (2) gendered gatekeeping of menstruation knowledge; and (3) systemic barriers and inconsistencies in menstruation education. Our analysis complements but extends recent calls for improvements to menstruation education in Australian schools. Affirmative menstrual support practices and facilities are needed in primary schools to normalise and encourage conversations with students about menarche and menstruation irrespective of age, gender, class or culture.

Appearance Satisfaction Among Adolescent Girls in Australia, China, India, and Iran: The Role of Perceived Actual-Ideal Discrepancies in Facial and Bodily Attributes

The current study examined the associations between perceived actual-ideal discrepancies in facial and bodily attributes and adolescent girls’ appearance satisfaction and whether these relationships were moderated by the importance associated with the attributes and/or the country of the participants. A multilingual survey was completed by 900 girls aged 12–18 years old living in Australia, China, India, and Iran. Girls in India and Iran were most satisfied with their appearance followed by girls in China and Australia. Iranian girls had the highest perceived actual-ideal discrepancies in facial and bodily attributes. Chinese and Indian girls perceived their facial attributes to be more important to their overall sense of appearance than their bodily attributes, whereas Australian and Iranian girls valued them equally. Higher perceived actual-ideal facial discrepancies were related to lower appearance satisfaction only for Iranian girls and higher perceived bodily discrepancies were linked to lower appearance satisfaction only for Australian girls. The importance associated with physical attributes and/or the country of participants did not moderate the relationship between perceived discrepancies and appearance satisfaction for facial or bodily attributes. Findings underscore the critical role of cultural nuances in understanding body image among adolescent girls and determinants of appearance satisfaction.

Independent pragmatic replication of the Dove Confident Me body image program in an Australian Girls Independent Secondary School

Following calls for the independent replication of universal body image programs under diverse conditions, this research aimed to investigate whether the universal co-educational prevention program developed for audiences in the United Kingdom (Dove Confident Me, DCM), was an acceptable and effective intervention when delivered by teachers to adolescent girls attending a single-sex Australian school. Comprising two studies, Study 1, evaluated DCM among Grade 8 students (N = 198) at a single-sex private school, and compared the results with students (N = 208) s from a matched comparison group. No improvements were observed on outcome measures between the comparison and intervention girls over the three time points. Study 2 involved minor modifications to the aesthetics and content of the program, as well as the logistics of delivery. Delivered by teachers to Grade 8 students (N = 242 intervention and N = 354 comparison), there were significant improvements in acceptability of the modified DCM program, yet no interaction effects observed on outcome measures. While the program did no harm, it is possible that there are adjustments to the methods utilized and content of programs that are trialed in efforts to prevent body image concerns and eating disorders in the school setting.

Disparities in Human Papillomavirus vaccination coverage among adolescents in Australia: A geospatial analysis

AimThis ecological study aimed to examine the geographic patterns in Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates among boys and girls aged 15 years across locations in Australia, in addition to assessing contextual area-level factors that may explain the variations in HPV vaccination coverage. MethodsAggregate HPV vaccination data for Australian girls and boys aged 15 years from 2015 to 16 was obtained from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare for each Statistical Area level 4 (SA4). A Gradient Boosting Machine learning model was applied to assess the predictors’ importance for the study outcomes. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) models were run to assess whether substantially different relationships between predictors and outcomes occur at different locations in space. ResultsCompleted HPV vaccination across the 88 SA4 regions ranged from 57.6% to 90.6% among girls, and from 53.6% to 85.5% among boys. The 2016 SEIFA Index of Economic Resources was the variable with the highest contribution to the predictions of both girls’ and boys’ HPV vaccination rates. Selected predictors explained 45% and 72% of the geographic variance in vaccination rates among boys and girls, respectively. Normalised coefficients for both GWR models showed a high variation in the associations between predictors and HPV vaccination rates across regions. ConclusionSocioeconomic and education factors were important predictors for HPV vaccination rates among Australian boys and girls aged 15 years, although no variable presented a uniform effect on HPV vaccination across SA4 regions. Important spatial heterogeneity in the effect of predictors was identified across the study area.

‘It was pandemonium let loose’: rioting, resistance and punishment at the early twentieth-century Girls’ Reformatory at Redruth, South Australia

In 1921, a serious riot at the South Australian Girls’ Reformatory at Redruth made newspaper headlines across the country. The girls defied the reformatory staff and destroyed government property, while following a pattern of resistance that was common among contemporary, incarcerated women. In the aftermath, some observers blamed an official ban on corporal punishment for the riot, as well as the reformatory staff’s inability to segregate the ‘worst characters’ from other inmates. However, others offered a critique of South Australia’s welfare system as unfairly targeting working-class children for removal from their families in certain conditions. This article investigates the reformatory riot and argues that the underlying reasons for the disturbance, and the subsequent closure of the institution, were more complex than many contemporary observers realised.

The influence of paternal co-participation on girls’ participation in surfing, mountain biking, and skateboarding in regional Australia

ABSTRACT In 2021, surfing and skateboarding are scheduled to join mountain-biking as Olympic sports for the first time, a classification that comes with requirements related to sex/gender equity. Yet, these sports, and action sports generally, continue to be male dominated as questions of performance and risk are framed around boys, men, and masculinities. This qualitative study explored the facilitators of 27 Australian girls’ participation in surfing, mountain biking and skateboarding. This article focuses on the value of paternal co-participation, which was notable in interviews with girls who surf or mountain bike. In particular, we examine the complexity of the role and influence of fathers in girls’ participation. Reflecting their position in action sports, men often shape how girls access these sports and develop their skills. This points to the importance of men and fathers in facilitating girls’ participation in action sports, and possibly broader physical activity behaviours. However, we argue that merely facilitating their daughters’ participation without addressing the experiences of women without male ‘patrons’ in action sports reinscribes male dominance rather than improving gender equity. This study contributes to established work that aims to inform policies and strategies to encourage greater participation of girls and women in action sports.

Actors, puppets, Girls: Little Women and the collective Bildungsroman

ABSTRACT This essay spans a long and somewhat unconventional arc – from Goethe’s 1795–6 Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Years to Lena Dunham’s recent television series Girls. On the one hand, it focuses on the question of collectivity and coercion in Goethe’s Ur-Bildungsroman, set initially among itinerant actors, joined and then partly led by a bourgeois scion escaping from his upbringing. Yet the novel differs in important ways from the picaresque. The essay argues, moreover, that Dunham’s Girls, in the plural, with its collective protagonists, is only the latest iteration in a long tradition of female Bildungsromane (from Austen’s 1813 Pride and Prejudice to Louisa May Alcott’s 1868–9 Little Women, the widely-popular 1890s Australian girls’ novels of Ethel Turner and Louisa Mack, and subsequent family books by E. Nesbit, Noel Streatfeild, etc.) featuring a small sibling or friend group in lieu of a single protagonist. These grouped characters, traversing trials and incidents together, or in contrast to one another, enabled a more faceted account of female social models, developmental variables, and struggles for agency. To chronicle one’s own life, on film, as fiction, and as part of a generational plural, is to reground the Bildungsroman itself as a thoroughly self-interrogatory and feminist practice.

It’s “vile” but is it violence? A case study analysis of news media representations of non-consensual sexual image-sharing

ABSTRACT Late in 2016, a news story broke of a “porn-sharing site” on which over 2000 sexual images of Australian teen girls, from over 70 high schools, were uploaded without their consent. News media characterised the website as “vile” and “depraved”. However, the extent to which the actions of the site-users constituted a form of sexual violence remained opaque in the reporting. This paper examines the coverage of this news story as a case study to explore the ways expanding scholarly and activist understandings of sexual violence in the digital age are—and are not—reflected in news reporting on this case. Applying a critical feminist and Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis to news coverage, it is argued that the discursive construction of non-consensual sexual image-sharing is evolving and contested. Feminist insights into the gendered, cultural and systemic quality of these practices are making tentative in-roads into news coverage. At the same time, assumptions surrounding digital sexual self-expression for teens continue to elide considerations of consent, and the violence of these acts is discursively minimised.

Menstrual health and hygiene among Indigenous Australian girls and women: barriers and opportunities

Health inequities inhibit global development and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. One gendered health area, Menstrual Health & Hygiene (MHH), has received increasing attention in Low- and Middle-Income Countries as a barrier to health, wellbeing, and gender equity. Recent anecdotal evidence in Australia highlights that MHH also present challenges to High Income Countries, particularly among underrepresented populations, such as Indigenous Australian peoples, people from low socio-economic backgrounds, or communities that are remotely located. In this article, we chart the emergence of attention to MHH in the Australian context and highlight key considerations for the conduct of research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples within the culturally- and gender-sensitive area of MHH. Further we draw on insights offered by a partnership between female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, NGO stakeholders, and non-Indigenous researchers. Through a convening (yarning circle) held in March 2018, the group identified multiple socioecological considerations for MHH research and practice, including: affordability and access to menstrual products, barriers to knowledge and culturally sensitive education, infrastructure and supply chain challenges, and the necessity of Indigenous-led research and community-driven data collection methods in addressing the sensitive topic. We draw together these insights to develop recommendations for future research, advocacy, and action in Australia.

Sisterhood, pleasure and marching: Indigenous women and leisure

ABSTRACT For Australian Indigenous women, especially those who lived on settlements and missions, participation in the male preserve of sport was doubly shaped by colonization and by Western notions of women’s bodies. In this paper, we will discuss the Cherbourg Marching Girls, who competed in precision marching from 1957 to 1962, to explore how, as young Indigenous women growing up on a settlement in mid-twentieth-century Queensland, the Marching Girls were able to use their participation in what could be viewed as a Western, militarized, disciplined activity to access the joys and pleasures of sport and to strengthen connections with other Indigenous Australian girls and women. These connections and pleasures continue 60 years later through their memories of marching. In this article, we draw on Moreton-Robinson's Australian Indigenous women’s standpoint theory to truly listen to how the Marching Girls continue to make sense of their lives in the past and present.

Beyond risk and safety? Identifying shifts in sex education advice targeted at young women

This study investigates changes in sex education advice from the 1990s to the 2010s. Our research is based on the analysis of an 88,000 word corpus of advice columns from Dolly, a beauty, lifestyle and celebrity magazine aimed at Australian girls. The data are taken from 1994, 1995, 2014 and 2015, with both decades compared against each other to identify any potential shifts in sex education advice. The study combines corpus linguistic techniques with analysis of evaluative language (appraisal). Our analysis reveals a preoccupation with sexual health in the 1990s, shifting to a preoccupation with mental health in the 2010s. We identify a discourse of risk and safety and a discourse of pleasure in the 1990s, and medicalising and normalising discourses of mental health in the 2010s. We also consider interactions between question and answer in the advice pages, to better understand how discourses are introduced and negotiated in such written dialogic texts.

The Huntsman

The Huntsman Lisa Taddeo (bio) It was the early aughts, and she was working with a group of married men on Forty-Seventh and Ninth. They were transferring newspaper stories onto the internet. Her coworkers' wives were long-nailed and harmless back in Long Island and New Jersey. These men couldn't wrap their heads around city girls, who didn't crave houses but parties. They wanted for women more now that they were married. Their faces keened with middling greed. In the end they were satisfied with free drinks. The regulars sat on their regular stools. They stared at their well drinks and the bartender's hands in that habit that regulars have of looking at something and nothing and owning the real estate in between. One vaporized accountant was eating chocolate ice cream. It melted in a silver cup while he sipped whisky. He reminded her of Christmases past. There were some underage Australian girls. Some Irishmen who should have beards and some young men who shouldn't. [End Page 629] Her coworkers stood in a loose circle by the dart board. At twenty-four, she was wiser than them, with their mini bagels and their gray pants. They talked about public golf courses and never touched the jukebox. When she got bored, she slipped out for cigarettes. Her friends wanted to know where she went on Thursdays. She could not say, Midtown. She felt it was more restful to hang with encrusted men than with a bottleneck of girls her own age, most with nicer hair and clothes. That it was advantageous, even, to be with these guys. Especially Mac. Mac was the new boss. He was fat and balding. His pate shone like a frog. In Montclair he had a wife and a slow son and a skinny daughter. She spied pictures of them on his credenza. He talked about the girl, about her riding horses. Mentioned hunters and dressage as if they weren't any different. He wore expensive ties and smoked only when she did, to ride the elevator with her and go through the revolving door behind her. The coders feared him. All week they affixed the right tag to a certain story with doggedness. They had done it sloppily for years, but when Mac was hired it became poetry. He made them feel like sons. She sensed his infatuation at the first meeting. It came across the kidney-shaped table. She wore a vintage peasant top and blue jeans. Her shoulders were young and pointed unreliably towards heaven. Mac looked at her and couldn't thereafter look at anything else. Forty minutes or however long it lasted. She accepted the gaze. She didn't put it in her pocket but let it hover in the air around her forehead. She was weekendly in love with someone at the time, some thin boy inside her phone. Being cherished by a kind, fat man in New York, in the middle of all the loathing and long lines, is like Popeyeing spinach. [End Page 630] For several months she received the usual favors. Coming in late without consequence, leaving a meeting early. She took her lunches in the museum, lingering ten, fifteen minutes past the hour. When September came, she enjoyed glasses of crisp white wine at outdoor tables, reading books and magazines. In turn the work she produced was golden. Being teacher's pet will do that. Girls her age had Labor Day plans, Montauk and heartless. She had Mac. She didn't have to do anything to maintain his reverence besides exist. She had to keep being pretty, but even if she had a breakout, or chopped her hair too short, she would still retain the early effulgence. A man must only see a woman as beautiful once. For one minute she must impress him and thereafter, nevermore. ________ Mac's hiring had coincided with nightly happy hours for the group. He always paid for the first few rounds. He used the company card but occasionally slid across his own. The men drank beers; she drank Merlot, at seven dollars a glass, out of plastic goblets. Generally the wine tasted of puke. He...

Establishing the international prevalence of self-reported child maltreatment: a systematic review by maltreatment type and gender

BackgroundEstimating the prevalence of child maltreatment is challenging due to the absence of a clear ‘gold standard’ as to what constitutes maltreatment. This systematic review aims to review studies using self-report maltreatment to capture prevalence rates worldwide.MethodsPubMed, Ovid SP and grey literature from the NSPCC, UNICEF, The UK Government, and WHO from 2000 to 2017 were searched. The literature review focused on the variation found in self-reported lifetime prevalence for each type of maltreatment between studies by continent and gender, and how methodological differences may explain differences found.ResultsSexual abuse is the most commonly studied form of maltreatment across the world with median (25th to 75th centile) prevalence of 20.4% (13.2% to 33.6%) and 28.8% (17.0% to 40.2%) in North American and Australian girls respectively, with lower rates generally for boys. Rates of physical abuse were more similar across genders apart from in Europe, which were 12.0% (6.9% to 23.0%) and 27.0% (7.0% to 43.0%) for girls and boys respectively, and often very high in some continents, for example, 50.8% (36.0% to 73.8%) and 60.2% (43.0% to 84.9%) for girls and boys respectively in Africa. Median rates of emotional abuse were nearly double for girls than boys in North America (28.4% vs 13.8% respectively) and Europe (12.9% vs 6.2% respectively) but more similar across genders groups elsewhere. Median rates of neglect were highest in Africa (girls: 41.8%, boys: 39.1%) and South America (girls: 54.8%, boys: 56.7%) but were based on few studies in total, whereas in the two continents with the highest number of studies, median rates differed between girls (40.5%) and boys (16.6%) in North America but were similar in Asia (girls: 26.3%, boys: 23.8%).ConclusionsMedian prevalence rates differ substantially by maltreatment category, gender and by continent. The number of studies and available data also varies and relatively little is known about prevalence for some forms of maltreatment, particularly outside of the North American context. Prevalence rates require caution in interpretation as some variation will reflect methodological differences, including the data collection methods, and how the maltreatment is defined.

The Relationship Between Fundamental Movement Skills and Physical Self-Perception Among Adolescent Girls

This study aimed to explore the relationship between fundamental movement skills (FMS) and multiple levels of physical self-perception among early adolescent girls. The Victorian FMS Teachers’ Manual was used to measure actual FMS. Perceptions were measured using the Physical Self-Perception Profile and the Perceived Movement Skill Competence Scale. Pearson’s correlations assessed the association between FMS and each level of physical self-perception. General linear models, adjusting for potential confounders, were conducted to explore the relationship between FMS and multiple levels of physical self-perception. A total of 173 Australian girls (M = 12.48 years,SD = .34) had complete data. Results found positive moderate and significant associations between actual FMS and physical self-perception, perceived sports competence, and, to a lesser degree, perceived FMS. Actual and perceived object control skill were also moderately associated, but there was no association between actual and perceived locomotor skill. After adjusting for potential confounders, FMS remained a significant predictor of each level of perception in each model, except for locomotor skill. These findings are important for future intervention development to improve both actual and perceived FMS, particularly in object control skill, which has been identified as a predictor of subsequent physical activity.

An investigation of young girls’ responses to sexualized images

Evidence suggests that the sexualization of girls has increased and become more explicit in recent years. However, most of the research conducted to date has focused on sexualization in adults. To address this research gap, this study explored how young Australian girls respond to and describe sexualized and non-sexualized depictions of their peers. Results from 42 girls aged 6–11 years revealed that sexualization was a perceptually salient attribute, with participants readily classifying sexualized girls as a subgroup. Participants also made distinct trait attributions based on the differences between sexualized and non-sexualized girls. The results suggest that young girls respond differently to sexualized and non-sexualized depictions of their peers and are beginning to develop stereotypes based on these depictions. As such, the implementation of media literacy programs in adolescence may be too late and efforts may be required to address this issue among younger children.

Return to Hanging Rock: lost children in a Gothic landscape

ABSTRACTUsing the philosophical position of phenomenology, this article examines the ways in which ideas of wildness combine with Australian Gothic tropes such as the white colonial lost child and the bush as a haunted locale to compose key features of an Australian ecoGothic. On St Valentine’s Day in 1900, three young Australian girls and their teacher disappear from a school picnic at the ancient site of Mount Macedon in Victoria. The analysis of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), which focuses on author Joan Lindsay’s posthumously published chapter eighteen (1987) examines how elements of the material, sensing world combine with the mythological or sacred to connect the human protagonists with the Gothic landscape they inhabit. The resulting intersubjectivity problematises colonial ideology and unsettles notions of national identity.

Australian Girls' Reading in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: A Survey of the Necessary Approaches

AbstractAlthough the history of girlhood has attracted growing attention around the world, there still remains a lot to uncover, particularly in the Australian context. This article addresses the history of girls' reading habits in the first half of the twentieth century: examining where progress has been made in this area, and looking at avenues for further discussion – particularly in the examination of gender roles and in notions of growing up. This article argues that in completing a history of girls' reading habits, new light can be shed on these important areas of study. The article also addresses questions of methodology, examining autobiographies and memoirs as a particularly rich source for memories about girls' reading.

Staging Japanese Femininity: Cross-cultural Dressing in Australian Photography

The popularity of Japanese inspired dress in portrait photographs of middle-class Australian women and girls during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offers new insight into cross-cultural dressing and its links to identity. Rather than simply mirroring Orientalist fantasies of the distant and exotic East, these photographs indicate how Anglo-Australian women’s material cultural practices spoke to their own experiences of modernity and their impressions of Japanese femininity. Through their production and consumption of Japanese inspired fashion, musical theatre, decorative arts and travel photographs, these women were encouraged to respond to their admiration of Japanese femininity with their own embodied performances for the camera. Photographs of Australian women and girls in kimonos also illuminate the complexity of Australia’s cultural engagement with Japan in the era of the racially exclusive “White Australia” policy and Japanese imperialist incursions in the Asia-Pacific region. In staging their perceptions of Japanese femininity at home and in the photographer’s studio, Australian women also reconciled a series of conflicting ideals associated with dress reform, women’s suffrage and the “new woman.”

Adolescent Performance on The Awareness of Social Inference Test: TASIT

Primary objective: Social cognition underlies social skills and can be disrupted in numerous developmental and acquired brain disorders during childhood and adolescence. Despite this, there are few tools to assess social cognition clinically in this age group. This study examined adolescent performance on The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), a valid measure of social cognition in adults.Design: Cross-sectional design examining performance on Parts 1, 2 and 3 of TASIT (and alternate forms) in Australian girls and boys with varying levels of English familiarity.Methods: 665 schoolchildren from private and government schools were administered TASIT subtests. Of these, 464 students aged 13–15 were selected to provide normative data. Scores from a further 97 provided information about the effects of lack of English familiarity.Results: The two Forms of TASIT were statistically equivalent for two of the three parts. Adolescents performed lower than adults, although the differences were not large. Some incremental effects were seen for chronological age. Gender effects were apparent on all subtests. Lack of English familiarity (i.e., English not spoken at home) reduced scores a further 6–13% relative to high English proficiency.Conclusions: TASIT appears to be suitable for adolescents. Norms are best aggregated across ages in adolescence and stratified according to gender.

Public and Private Spaces: Sport and the Construction of Middle Class Femininity in Sydney Independent Girls’ Schools 1880-1922

This article documents the history of sport in independent girls’ schools in Sydney, Australia, from the introduction of compulsory education in 1880 until the formation of the Girls Secondary School Sports Union in 1922 to organize interschool sporting connections. While there have been many vigorous studies that have followed the history of sport in Australian independent boys’ schools, this has not been replicated in the role of sport in Australian independent girls’ schools. The Australian independent girls’ school sector, however, accounts for a significant portion of the total student population. This article demonstrates that sport was significant in Australian independent girls’ schools and became dominant to the education of middle class girls. Modeled after the English Public Schools that had embraced the educational ideology of ‘athleticism’, Australian girls’ independent schools also reinforced the ideology that sport was a part of a well-rounded education. By the early 1920s sport was part of the independent girls’ schools extracurricular accomplishments and the sporting landscape became a ‘public space’ where middle-class femininity was constructed.