Journal Articles
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915
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Item How (In)Visibility Shapes Women's Experience of Inequity in Prison Work: A Cooperative Inquiry With Women Working in Australian Men's Prisons(John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2025-10-11) Walker C; Riley S; Stephens C; Beban AResearch shows that women working in men's prisons face both scrutiny and exclusion within a high-risk, masculinized occupational culture. Addressing a gap in theorizing the processes involved, this article explores the interplay of gender, visibility, and power through a poststructuralist-informed thematic analysis of data from 16 women participating in four cooperative inquiry groups in Australian men's prisons. Theorized through Lewis and Simpson's (in)visibility vortex, we demonstrate how gendered norms function to marginalize women. First, sexualization produces “abject exposure,” making women visible against the male norm, undermining their workplace legitimacy. Second, “disappearance” renders women invisible to the norm by positioning them as incapable and forms self-disappearance to protect oneself from exposure. Third, “revelation” occurs when women make gendered norms visible, which participants did through their existence as professionally competent prison workers and, at times, explicit challenges. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of (in)visibility in maintaining gender inequities in male-dominated organizational cultures, such as prison work, and offers a complex theorization of how sexualization, risk and fear, and professional competence operate within the (in)visibility vortex. We also evidence how cooperative inquiry can develop collective strategies for resistance, offering insights for transforming the gendered conditions of such environments.Item Exploring women’s intentions to seek medicinal cannabis prescriptions in New Zealand using the theory of planned behaviour(Taylor and Francis Group, 2025-03-13) Withanarachchie V; Rychert M; Wilkins CBackground: Women are an emerging demographic for legal medicinal cannabis (MC) in New Zealand and overseas, yet their information sources and prescription pathways remain underexplored. This study examines how women learn about MC and the factors influencing their prescription decisions, including motivations tied to prior cannabis experience. Methods: Interviews with 23 women who sought MC prescriptions in the last 12 months. The Theory of Planned Behaviour guided the deductive thematic analysis to explore the factors influencing their intention to seek MC prescriptions. Results: Participants were primarily motivated by positive online testimonies from other women MC consumers. Unregulated forums, social media, and cannabis clinics websites provided accessible channels for MC information, supporting self-guided treatment and perceptions of prescription pathways (private cannabis clinics vs. regular physicians). Past negative experiences with medical professionals influenced these choices. While some women feared stigma and judgement, others felt empowered to prioritise their needs and challenge gendered views of cannabis. Conclusion: The TPB model showed that positive beliefs about MC, accessible prescriptions, and support encouraged legal MC use, while stigma and negative physician interactions discouraged it. Digital platforms enabled self-guided treatment, however, limit reliable information. Credible online resources are needed to support women’s growing interest in MC.Item Exploring hidden risks and empowerment in women’s acquisition of medicinal cannabis from illegal markets: a qualitative study(Taylor and Francis Group, 2025-03-21) Withanarachchie V; Rychert M; Wilkins CBackground: Women are a growing consumer base for medicinal cannabis (MC) in jurisdictions where it has been legalised, however, many still purchase MC from the unregulated illegal market. Little is known about women’s experiences of buying MC from these male-dominated illegal drug markets. This study explores women’s lived experiences accessing MC from illegal markets in New Zealand (NZ) to inform the need to ehance MC schemes for women. Methods: In-depth interviews with 15 women who purchased MC from the illegal market post MC legalisation. A qualitative description approach analysed their experiences, supplier relationships, and safety. Results: MC legalisation has facilitated a pathway to prescriptions, however, women face barriers including less disposable income, prioritising family expenses, and sexist attitudes among health professionals. Illegal markets were described as intimidating, with reports of sexual harassment, assault, and robbery. A novel finding waswomen-only social media groups for safety and supplier monitoring. Participants felt responsible for their own safety, as reporting to police posed legal risks. Conclusion: Women face gende-specific vulnerabilities when buying MC illegally, including safety risks and exposure to unregulated products. The findings are often overlooked in MC policy discussions, highlighting the need for gender-informed MC access.Item Motherhood and medicinal cannabis.(John Wiley and Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs., 2025-02-18) Withanarachchie V; Rychert M; Wilkins CINTRODUCTION: Women are emerging as a key demographic for medicinal cannabis (MC) use in countries that have implemented MC reforms. However, research on mothers' experiences of consuming MC remains limited beyond studies on perinatal outcomes. This study explores mothers' diverse experiences of consuming MC in New Zealand under the legal MC scheme. METHODS: Interviews with 15 mothers using MC via prescriptions, the illegal market or both in the last 12 months. Thematic analysis focused on MC use in parenting, MC conversations with children, societal stigma and risks. RESULTS: Mothers reported MC as an important facilitator of their ability to positively parent their children, enabling them to manage their own health needs (i.e., anxiety, endometriosis and arthritis). High costs of legal products hindered access to MC. Participants expressed unique risks that mothers face accessing the unregulated market for MC like being deemed a 'bad mother' and losing custody of children. Stigma was countered with narratives of empowerment through proactive MC conversations with children and agency by self-medicating with MC despite the judgement they may face for being a parent that uses cannabis. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Mothers felt managing their health with MC allowed them to be more present parents and better tolerate the stressors of motherhood. In-depth exploration of discussing MC with children and anticipating these conversations was a novel finding. Most mothers tried to destigmatise MC in conversations by classifying it in the same category as other medications and discussing its therapeutic benefits. Few were cautious about having these conversations too early.Item Supporting Intellectually Disabled Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: A Qualitative Study With Support Workers in Aotearoa New Zealand(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023-11-16) Bloom O; Morison TThis article presents findings from a qualitative study of support worker responses to intellectually disabled women’s sex and reproductive health. Drawing on reproductive justice theory, interviews with seven support workers from various disability service providers in New Zealand were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings point to the persistence of a sexual risk discourse, which undermines progressive perspectives, including the rights-based approach that is usually advocated for in sexual and reproductive health, and ultimately constrains intellectually disabled women’s sexual agency. The value of a reproductive justice framework for countering risk-oriented framings in favor of a social justice perspective that expands the notions of individual rights is discussed. The findings support a growing global evidence base and have implications for national and international policy and practice.Item Empowering middle-aged women? A discourse analysis of gendered ageing in the Chinese television reality show sisters who make waves(Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-01-23) Zhang X; Riley SSisters Who Make Waves is a popular Chinese reality show that affirmatively centres “middle-aged” women. Given its popularity and positive framing, the show has significant potential to shape Chinese discourses of gendered aging. To examine this potential, we performed a discourse analysis on Season 2 of Sisters Who Make Waves, identifying its discursive constructions of gendered aging; the subject positions within these discourses; and the rhetorical strategies interpellating the viewer to identify with these subject positions. Three discourses were evident: (1) “age is a problem for women” (an account articulated only to be refuted), (2) “age is a problem only if you let it;” and (3) “hyper resilience” (an expectation of psychological resilience in the face of severe challenges). Reading this analysis through the lens of a postfeminist sensibility, we show how the affirmative potential of Sisters Who Make Waves is undercut with the show’s entanglement of empowerment with regulation and synergies between postfeminist feeling rules and Chinese state ideology of Positive Energy 正能量.Item Parity and the risk of incident dementia: a COSMIC study(Cambridge University Press, 2020-10-20) Bae JB; Lipnicki DM; Han JW; Sachdev PS; Kim TH; Kwak KP; Kim BJ; Kim SG; Kim JL; Moon SW; Park JH; Ryu S-H; Youn JC; Lee DY; Lee DW; Lee SB; Lee JJ; Jhoo JH; Skoog I; Najar J; Sterner TR; Scarmeas N; Yannakoulia M; Dardiotis E; Riedel-Heller S; Roehr S; Pabst A; Ding D; Zhao Q; Liang X; Lobo A; De-la-Cámara C; Lobo E; Kim KW; for Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium (COSMIC)Aims To investigate the association between parity and the risk of incident dementia in women. Methods We pooled baseline and follow-up data for community-dwelling women aged 60 or older from six population-based, prospective cohort studies from four European and two Asian countries. We investigated the association between parity and incident dementia using Cox proportional hazards regression models adjusted for age, educational level, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and cohort, with additional analysis by dementia subtype (Alzheimer dementia (AD) and non-Alzheimer dementia (NAD)). Results Of 9756 women dementia-free at baseline, 7010 completed one or more follow-up assessments. The mean follow-up duration was 5.4 ± 3.1 years and dementia developed in 550 participants. The number of parities was associated with the risk of incident dementia (hazard ratio (HR) = 1.07, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02–1.13). Grand multiparity (five or more parities) increased the risk of dementia by 30% compared to 1–4 parities (HR = 1.30, 95% CI = 1.02–1.67). The risk of NAD increased by 12% for every parity (HR = 1.12, 95% CI = 1.02–1.23) and by 60% for grand multiparity (HR = 1.60, 95% CI = 1.00–2.55), but the risk of AD was not significantly associated with parity. Conclusions Grand multiparity is a significant risk factor for dementia in women. This may have particularly important implications for women in low and middle-income countries where the fertility rate and prevalence of grand multiparity are high.Item Women leadership in business based on customary land: The concept of wanbel(Development Studies Network Ltd, Australian National University, 2019-11) Steven H; Banks G; Scheyvens RItem Navigating Security in the Pacific(Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, 2020-03) Greener B; Noa AThis article examines how New Zealand has framed recent security dynamics in the region and asks how this framing aligns with the priorities of Pacific partners. There are some indications of increasing alignment with ‘like-minded’ partners such as the US and Australia, prompted in part by increased concerns about Chinese engagement in the region. However, New Zealand has also been circumspect in seeking out opportunities to continue to engage with China and, perhaps most importantly for its Pacific partners, has increasingly responded to regional concerns about understanding climate change as an existential security threat. Recent uptake of Pacific imagery and narrative in the Ministry of Defence's Advancing Pacific Partnerships policy document is particularly evocative in suggesting a more genuine recentring of Pacific priorities, although enduring engagement is needed to support rhetorical commitments (New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2018). Here relationships with diasporic populations, youth and women, in particular, should be more strongly pursued as New Zealand navigates its way in and through the Pacific and its politics into the future.Item Meeting in the Middle: Using Lingua Franca in Cross-Language Qualitative Health Research in Papua New Guinea(SAGE Journals for the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology (IIQM) at the University of Alberta, Canada, 30/10/2019) Redman-MacLaren M; Mafile'o T; Tommbe R; MacLaren DWith words as data, qualitative researchers rely upon language to understand the meaning participants make of the phenomena under study. Cross-language research requires communication about and between linguistic systems, with language a site of power. This article describes the use of the lingua franca of Tok Pisin in a study conducted to explore the implications of male circumcision for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention for women in Papua New Guinea. Utilizing a transformational grounded theory methodology, researchers conducted an analysis of data from an HIV prevention study. Researchers then facilitated individual interviews and interpretive focus groups to explore preliminary categories identified during the analysis. Most focus groups and interviews were conducted in the local lingua franca Tok Pisin, which is neither the researchers’ nor most participants’ first language. Audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed. Researchers returned to research participants to discuss research findings and recommendations. Following critical reflection by the authors and further discussions with participants, it was evident that using Tok Pisin enriched the research process and findings. Using the lingua franca of Tok Pisin enabled interaction in a language closer to the lived experience of participants, devolved the power of the researcher, and was consistent with decolonizing methodologies. Participants reported the use of Tok Pisin, em i tasim (pilim) bun bilong mipela, “it touches our bones,” and enabled a flow of conversation with the researchers that engendered trust. It is critical researchers address hierarchies of language in order to enable cogeneration of quality research findings.