Search

Food security remains a critical global issue, made more difficult because of the rising world population, climate challenges affecting food production and a focus on market-based solutions that undermine subsistence production in vulnerable rural areas. Particularly affected are countries across Asia where poverty, hunger and malnourishment affect a significant proportion of the population. Drawing on Sen’s entitlement theory, we argue that a shift in focus from national food production to intra-household food access enables a critical reflection on consumption smoothing strategies adopted at this level. In particular, we draw attention to the tendency for women and girls to eat less as an intra-household adaptation strategy. We present findings from our research in rural areas of Bangladesh and note that adaptation strategies adopted by households in response to food insecurity. We note that strategies designed to address food insecurity must include gender mainstreaming to ensure that women and...

Rural mainstreaming reviews policies to ensure people in all parts of a country receive comparable policy treatment. Rural proofing is the method used to ensure that rural mainstreaming is correctly carried out. This article offers a critical analysis of rural proofing. It examines English policies in this area and questions how applicable similar policies might be in an Australian context. We argue that while rural proofing intuitively feels like a positive development for a country rich in rural and remote areas, there are many complexities to importing a policy designed for a different social and spatial context. In Australia, this is almost certain to render attempts to implement the English rural proofing concept futile. Indeed, we contend that this concept can potentially lead to the marginalization of rural issues. We conclude by identifying some of the complex questions our argument identifies which should be addressed by Australian policy makers before designing specific policies. Related Articles Waheduzzaman, Wahed, and Sharif As-Saber. 2015. “Politics and Policy in Achieving Participatory Governance in a Developing Country Context.” Politics & Policy 3 (4): 474-501. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12121/pdf Mohammed, Abdulai Kuyini. 2013. “Civic Engagement in Public Policy Making: Fad or Reality in Ghana?” Politics & Policy 41 (1): 117-152. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12003/epdf Gabriel, Christina, and Laura MacDonald. 2011. “Citizenship at the Margins: The Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and Civil Society Advocacy.” Politics & Policy 39 (1): 45-67. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2010.00282.x/full Related Media Australian National Rural Women's Coalition. 2014. “Rural Proofing Australia—We All Count!” http://www.nrwc.com.au/Projects/RuralProofing.aspx United Kingdom Government website. 2015. “Rural Proofing Guidance.” https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rural-proofing-guidance La incorporacion evaluaciones rurales se encarga de asegurar que los habitantes de todo el pais se beneficien de politicas equivalentes. La correccion rural es el metodo usado para asegurar que la incorporacion de evaluaciones se realiza de forma correcta. Este articulo ofrece un analisis critico de la correcion rural. Se examinan politicas inglesas en este campo y se cuestiona que tan aplicables pueden ser estas politicas en un contexto australiano. Nosotros sostenemos que si bien la correccion rural puede parecer un desarrollo positivo en paises desarrollados con areas rurales y remotas, existen muchos factores que hacen complejo importar una politica disenada para un contexto social y espacial diferente. En el caso Australia, es casi definitivo que los intentos de implementar el concepto de correcion rural inglesa seran en vano. Argumentamos que este concepto puede ocasionar una potencial marginalizacion de asuntos rurales. Concluimos identificando los factores que deben ser analizados por los legisladores australianos para poder disenar estas politicas.

When disaster strikes, people become off-balance, confused, dazed, overwhelmed and shocked. During times of great stress such as disasters, people may be supported by their community and engage in profound acts of solidarity. Thus, the experience of disaster is one of incredible stress, but it is also one of deep community, solidarity, support and courage, especially in the Global South. Here, community ties and collective well-being are often more important than individual success or status.

Concerns for river health in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) area and shifting priorities for water use have led to a significant process of water reform over the last decade. The MDB area, also known as the food bowl of Australia, produces much of the country's food and is home to a significant portion of the population. A long-term drought, historical over-allocation of water for irrigation and climate variability have led to mounting concerns about the long-term viability of the rivers. While the reform process has resulted in the Commonwealth government taking control of the rivers from the States, it has also been influenced by changes in governments and consequent shifts in water allocation priorities from a privileging of agriculture to a broader approach encompassing economic, environmental and social concerns. This had led to uncertainty for the people and communities in the Basin and some confusion between the various layers of governance structures. This paper presents the results of exp...

Disasters result in devastating human, economic, and environmental effects. The paper highlights women's active participation in community-based disaster recovery efforts drawing from the results of the ‘Rebuilding Lives Post-disaster: Innovative Community Practices for Sustainable Development’ by an international research partnership. Two case studies are presented from Pakistan and the USA to demonstrate how women contribute to building resilience and promoting sustainable development in diverse post-disaster contexts. The policy and practice implications are relevant for discussions regarding the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals and framework.

Climate change and environmental disasters are destabilising communities across the world. In a challenging address to the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Doha in 2012, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon urged the global community to respond with conscientious foresight. This article discusses how social work might respond to this challenge. It outlines the social implications, social work theorists’ reconceptualisation of the environmental space as a domain of practice and ways that the global social work community can act to address these significant global challenges.

AJSI had its genesis in the Department of Social Work at the University of Sydney in 1961. Since that time both social work and the AJSI have developed and drifted apart. This paper charts this journey and points to a future where social work and AJSI will function as partners in critiquing social policy and social issues.

This chapter addresses agriculture and family farming, using this entry point to scrutinise gender relations and thereby disrupt the stereotypical view of rural Australia. The economic prosperity of rural communities is often inextricably linked to farming, and this gives farmers prominence in public affairs and community activities. Arguably there is a contrasting lack of space and services accorded to women and, at least historically, a more limited number of female leaders and opinion shapers. The chapter explains the Australian Women in Agriculture Movement during the 1990s. It focuses on changing gender relations in agricultural production over time; in doing so, it presents a far less harmonious, even conflicted, understanding of 'the rural' than that represented in folkloric imagery. It provides a brief historical summary that clarifies why family farming is the dominant form of agricultural production in Australia and why this is not only based on but also dependent on inequitable gender relations.

Synopsis Gender mainstreaming refers to the process of incorporating a gender perspective to any action, policy, legislation or action in order to ensure that the concerns of all are addressed and that gender inequalities are not perpetuated through institutional means. However the implementation of gender mainstreaming across the globe has not necessarily resulted in advances for women, as it is usually associated with a winding back of women-focused policies and programs. Emerging research indicates that climate change has significant gendered impacts and yet policies and practices designed to address and shape mitigation and adaptation strategies have failed to incorporate gender mainstreaming. Further the scientific and technological focus of many of these institutional responses has led to a lack of attention to social outcomes more generally. This has resulted in a lack of attention to the vulnerable groups, including women. This paper outlines an argument not only for gender mainstreaming of climate policy but also for policy focused specifically on women's empowerment. Gender mainstreaming is essential in ensuring that not only climate policies and programs are comprehensive, but so too are women-focused policies designed to ensure that women are supported and empowered to take action on their own behalf.

Synopsis This paper outlines the link between child and forced marriage, dowry and climate changes in Bangladesh. Drawing on a three year research study on the gendered impacts of climate change, we argue that climate crises are creating significant economic hardships. This has led to dowry being viewed by the families of young men as a form of capital accumulation. For the families of girls, dowry has become a significant burden, a burden that increases with the age of the girl. We argue that the economic crises created by climate challenges are leading to an increase in child and forced marriages because the dowry is cheaper. We conclude that attention to climate challenges must take a much broader focus on social consequences in order to protect the human rights of women and girls in vulnerable communities.

The person-in-the-environment concept has largely been interpreted by social workers to indicate social networks and relationships, ignoring the physical environment and its complex impact on human health and wellbeing. This article examines the environmental domain, noting the critical role social workers can have in this field as a consequence of climate events and global warming. The article notes the significance of gender as a key factor in vulnerability to disasters and outlines the need for social workers to consider gender as a critical indicator in their work in this emerging area. Embodiment, connection to place, poverty, and cultural awareness are also significant, but often overlooked, factors in a social work response to environmental disasters. Ecological and ecofeminist theories give a direction for social work theory and practice in the postdisaster space. The article challenges social workers to reconsider the person-in-the-environment as a complex and critical emerging domain of...

This article addresses the uneven impacts of climate change on women. To date, there has been a significant emphasis on climate science and technological solutions to aid mitigation and adaptation strategies. This has led to a form of global managerialism that presupposes that all people can adapt with the right resources and knowledge. In this article, it is argued that the differential impacts of climate change on women demand that climate actions and strategies require gender sensitivity and that further research on climate change, adaptations, and actions includes a gendered analysis. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:351–358. doi: 10.1002/wcc.232 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Permaculture may be used as a practice tool for environmental social workers to promote ecosocial transition. It is a social change movement that promotes local production, recognizes the importance of community, and rejects notions of individual entitlement to more than a fair share. It seeks to create ecologically and socially sustainable systems, thus combatting environmental degradation and addressing climate change. In this chapter we report on interviews with permaculturalists and explore the lived experience of permaculture and its relevance to ecosocial transition. Drawing from our experience as social workers, we pose that a partnership approach between social work and permaculture is needed to advance ecosocial transition.

This article examines the role of social workers in rural and remote areas of Australia. The uniqueness of Australia’s landscape, its vast distances, and sparse population base, create unique issues relating to service delivery in general and social work in particular. High levels of poverty, poorer health, lower socio-economic status, and an aging population base typify Australia’s remote areas. Despite these factors, inland regions of the country are subject to economic rationalist policies that make service access problematic. It is in these regions that rural and remote social workers practice. The article outlines the personal, practical, and professional challenges facing social workers and notes the unique opportunities available to workers who choose to live and work in these regions.

Food security is one of the global community’s most challenging concerns, and one that critically implicates agricultural production across the world. According to the United Nations High Level Panel on Global Security (2012, 13), an increasing population (expected to reach 9 billion by 2040) will necessitate an increase in food production of 50 percent by 2030. If this is to be achieved significant attention to strategies and actions designed to improve food production will be required. Yet while this remains a critical global challenge, the number of under-nourished people is growing, and food insecurity is unevenly distributed. The most critically affected are those areas where poverty levels are high and those most disproportionately affected are women and children in rural areas (De Schutter 2011). Particularly vulnerable are countries across South Asia where food insecurity is exacerbated by a number of additional factors including climate changes, processes of modernization, globalization, rising levels of fundamentalism, high levels of poverty, and ongoing rural area restructuring (Alston 2015).

Agricultural restructuring in Australia continues as a result of multiple and intersecting challenges. These include declining terms of trade, globalization and its impacts on agricultural markets, ongoing structural adjustment pressures, changing technologies and reduced access to irrigation water, as well as ongoing drought and other weather events that suggest climate changes are escalating and permanent (Gray and Lawrence 2001; Alston and Whittenbury 2012; Smith and Pritchard 2014; Pritchard 2000). Yet, while family farming remains the dominant unit of production in Australian agriculture (Productivity Commission 2005; Commonwealth of Australia 2014), in recent decades structural adjustments have resulted in a reduction in the number of farmers in Australia: “Over the 30 years to 2011, the number of farmers declined by 106,200 (40%), equating to an average of 294 fewer farmers every month over that period” (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012, 1). Nonetheless, family farming remains critical to the organization and embodiment of social and gendered roles and responsibilities that support commodity production in an evolving neoliberal economy.

This article examines the current knowledge shaping our understanding of human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation in Australia, a major destination country in a poorly researched region (Oceania). Challenges to developing accurate and useful knowledge: varied and poorly understood definitions, difficulties in gathering accurate data about a hidden problem, and narrowly focused research are explored. The article describes Australia’s current responses to sex trafficking and critiques current knowledge development strategies, concluding with recommendations for ways forward in researching this challenging and globally significant problem.

An ongoing crisis in Australian agriculture resulting from climate crises including drought, decreasing irrigation water, more recent catastrophic flooding, and an uncertain policy environment is reshaping gender relations in the intimate sphere of the farm family. Drawing on research conducted in the Murray-Darling Basin area of Australia we ask the question: Does extreme hardship/climate crises change highly inequitable gender relations in agriculture? As farm income declines, Australian farm women are more likely to be working off farm for critical family income while men continue to work on farm often in circumstances of damaged landscapes, rising debt, and limited production. This paper examines the way gender relations are being renegotiated in a time of significant climate crisis. Our research suggests that climate crises have indeed led to changes in gender relations and that some changes are unexpected. Whereas one would logically assume that women’s enhanced economic contribution would increase their power in gender negotiations, we argue that this does not necessarily occur because their contribution is viewed as a farm survival strategy. Men are committed to prioritizing the farm and view women’s income generating work as critical to this purpose and yet, paradoxically, long for a return to traditional farm roles. We find that women are actively resisting traditional gender relations by reshaping a role for themselves beyond the farm—in the process moving physically and mentally away from a farm family ideology, questioning gender inequalities, and by extension their relationships.

With advances in medical technology, more people are surviving major trauma experiences. Those with a traumatic brain injury are one such group who may survive for several decades with significant health consequences including physical, cognitive, and psychosocial sequelae. Traumatic brain injury sufferers are typically young males with a premorbid history of risk taking. Consequently, the differential needs of female traumatic brain injury survivors are less likely to be acknowledged in the literature or by allied health workers. A large quantitative and qualitative study of people with traumatic brain injury was conducted in rural areas of New South Wales, Australia in 2004–2005. The qualitative component of the study included in-depth interviews with 11 women and 21 men. This paper focuses on the interviews with the 11 women who live in two rural areas of New South Wales. These data illustrate the psychosocial consequences of traumatic brain injury for women. They reveal that women are particu...

The rate of suicide amongst Australia's rural men is significantly higher than rural women, urban men or urban women. There are many explanations for this phenomenon including higher levels of social isolation, lower socio-economic circumstances and ready access to firearms. Another factor is the challenge of climate transformation for farmers. In recent times rural areas of Australia have been subject to intense climate change events including a significant drought that has lingered on for over a decade. Climate variability together with lower socio-economic conditions and reduced farm production has combined to produce insidious impacts on the health of rural men. This paper draws on research conducted over several years with rural men working on farms to argue that attention to the health and well-being of rural men requires an understanding not only of these factors but also of the cultural context, inequitable gender relations and a dominant form of masculine hegemony that lauds stoicism in the face of adversity. A failure to address these factors will limit the success of health and welfare programs for rural men.

That climate change mitigation strategies may disproportionately affect rural people and communities is evidenced by the introduction of water mitigation policies in Australia. The significant consequences of water policy for irrigation farming families and communities in Australia's Murray–Darling Basin – the food bowl of Australia – are outlined. This policy emerges from a hierarchical model of governance and has resulted in uneven and perverse outcomes for people in rural areas. Lack of attention to metagovernance and a misplaced trust in the water market has left rural people and communities vulnerable to significant stress and disaffection, impacting on their resilience and adaptability to change. A partnership model of governance is suggested to guide climate change mitigation policies to ensure that the capacity of rural people and communities to adapt to significant change is enhanced rather than eroded.

Summary Background The relocation of women from their rural communities to birth in a centralised hospital is becoming increasingly common as maternity units close in rural areas of Australia. The significance for Aboriginal women when they are denied the support of kin around the time of birth but have that support re-established postnatally is explored. Methods This paper gathered data from multiple sources including in-depth interviews with three Aboriginal mothers and one partner; observational field notes; and during debriefing, the knowledge and experience of an Aboriginal midwife. Thematic analysis was utilised to both explore and critique the collected data. Findings and discussion Aboriginal women are particularly disadvantaged by maternity unit closures in rural areas of the south eastern Australian state of New South Wales (NSW). However, contrary to the expectation that this would result in postnatal mental health problems, the support the Aboriginal participants in this study received from kin may have had a mediating effect which enhanced their well-being and possibly prevented mental ill health. Recommendations Recommendations relate to strategies and policies that have the potential to increase community governance and feelings of cultural safety for Aboriginal childbearing women living in rural areas. Conclusion While the practice of forcing Aboriginal women to relocate around the time of birth has a negative impact on perinatal health outcomes, kinship support may be a mediating factor.

The divide between rich and poor in Australia is starkly apparent in health status statistics; the poorest Australians have the poorest health, and many live in rural Australia. However, little is known about financially deprived rural citizen's perceptions of their own health and their expectations of health care services. As a result, exploratory in-depth interviews were conducted with eleven rural residents dependent upon government income support. Ten of the eleven participants had chronic health problems, and these were being addressed symptomatically. The children of the participants also required interventions for a range of physical, emotional and mental problems. The participants relied on local services and local practitioners to provide suitable interventions and to direct them to other services if required. They had minimal knowledge, control or choice in the type of intervention or outcomes. In this group, poor health was normalised and future health not considered. Thus, those with most to gain from health promotion and prevention activities and social inclusion programs are unlikely to benefit because they may normalise poor health. Concepts of good health, health literacy, informed consent, choice of intervention or practitioner are meaningless in this rural context of deprivation. These findings suggest that the population who endure the burden of ill-health will be by-passed by current and popular public health techniques of health promotion because rural people with poor health have low expectations of their own health and health care. Similarly, health service providers have high expectations of health and the rational choices of the population they serve. Thus, there is a major disconnect between the expectations of both.