Category: Inequity

Medical research suffers from sex and gender bias. New standards hope to change that – ABC News

Australia’s largest health and medical research funding body has recommended sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation be routinely considered in health and medical research.

When Cheryl Carcel was in medical school, little attention was paid to the role that sex and gender can play in the detection and treatment of many major diseases.

Last year, she co-authored a study investigating the medical care that people with stroke receive before arriving at hospital in NSW, and found women were less likely to have their stroke recognised compared to men.

[Women] were thought to be having a migraine, high blood pressure, or some type of headache or nausea,” she said.

Stroke isn’t unique in this regard: women are less likely to be diagnosed and appropriately treated if they suffer a serious heart attack, less likely to have chronic pain acknowledged and treated, and more likely to be misdiagnosed or discharged during a serious medical event.

A growing body of evidence suggests there are clinically significant sex and gender differences across a broad range of diseases, from susceptibility and screening to risk factors, treatment and prognosis.

A recent study showed while women were over-represented in research perceived to ‘female-patient’ dominated, they were they were significantly under-represented in other areas, such as cardiology.

“We see in practice, for example, that women are 50 per cent more likely to have adverse reactions to drugs and vaccines than men; that pain medications don’t work as effectively in women as they do in men; and that women are more likely to develop chronic pain conditions and addictions to pain medication.”

In Australia, research shows women disproportionately experience delayed diagnosis, overprescribing, and a failure to have their symptoms properly investigated.

Source: Medical research suffers from sex and gender bias. New standards hope to change that – ABC News

Women play a crucial role in agriculture – so why are they often locked out of owning land?

When we think of a farmer, we still often imagine a man. But in reality, women contribute 49% to real farm income.

This isn’t just by increasingly working as farmers themselves. Keeping a farm business going usually relies on women’s off-farm work as well, particularly in times of drought.

Despite this, women often do not have ownership of farmland. And when it comes to who gets the family farm in succession planning, daughters, mothers and daughters-in-law are all likely to miss out.

There are established legal protections that women can draw on to challenge this. But our recent research finds these are often seen as a threat to the continuity of the family farm, and attempts are made to deliberately lock women out.

Source: Women play a crucial role in agriculture – so why are they often locked out of owning land?

Anna lost custody of her kids in jail. She blames the lack of an interpreter | SBS News

While Russian-born Anna was behind bars, she lost custody of her kids. Years later and now acquitted, it still hasn’t been completely restored. She says access to an interpreter could have spared their lives from being “ruined”.

Professor Ludmila Stern leads the Judicial Officers Working with Interpreters: Implications for Access to Justice project at the University of New South Wales.

Speaking to SBS Russian, Stern pointed out the link between interpreting services and access to a fair trial.

Stern said that interpreters in Australia’s courts often do not have allocated spots and are not always given time to prepare for hearings and review documents.

She added that lawyers and judges often do not speak slowly or with enough pauses to give interpreters adequate time to translate.

Earlier this week, interpreters gathered outside the County Court in Melbourne in protest following the recent changes to the pay scheme introduced by Court Services Victoria.

They say the state’s court system undermined their profession by cutting their hours and pay to save costs.

The minimum booking for an interpreter has been slashed from four hours to 90 minutes, resulting in interpreters losing much of their income.

Stern said that in Australia, the compensation for community interpreters does not match the complexity of their work.

Source: Anna lost custody of her kids in jail. She blames the lack of an interpreter | SBS News

The report on murdered and missing Indigenous women and children fails to hold anyone to account. It’s not enough.

After two years and 16 hearings, the Senate Inquiry into Missing and Murdered First Nations women handed down its report yesterday. While important, it was not the moment of reckoning many of us had hoped for.

The Senate inquiry was introduced and spearheaded by Dorinda Cox, the West Australian Greens Senator, who today called the report’s recommendations “weak” and “toothless”.

What the inquiry found is precisely what First Nations women have been saying for decades: that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children are disproportionately impacted by men’s use of violence.

That their stories and lives are ignored by mainstream media.

That police often fail to adequately investigate, search for, or respond to calls for help from First Nations women and children.

And that the data is shockingly incomplete and inadequate. No one is accurately keeping count.

First Nations women represented 16% of all Australian women homicide victims, despite comprising between 2–3% of the adult female population.

First Nations children represented 13% of all child homicide victims.

Not only are First Nations women and children more likely to go missing, they are less likely to be found.

First Nations women are also disproportionately misidentified as the perpetrator, instead of the victim, criminalising First Nations women and creating yet another barrier to getting help.

Source: The report on murdered and missing Indigenous women and children fails to hold anyone to account. It’s not enough.

International Olympic Committee Was Warned About Male Boxers, World Boxing Organization Vice President Says – Reduxx

A Hungarian sports official has come out and stated that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is not female. István Kovács, the European Vice President of the World Boxing Organization and former Secretary General of the International Boxing Association, told Hungarian press that he had warned the International Olympic Committee about males participating in women’s boxing as early as 2022, but that nothing was done.

In a shocking statement made to Magyar Nemzet yesterday, Kovács confirmed the speculation surrounding the Algerian boxer, adding that it had been known as early as 2022 that Khelif was biologically male.

“The problem was not with the level of Khelif’s testosterone, because that can be adjusted nowadays, but with the result of the gender test, which clearly revealed that the Algerian boxer is biologically male,” Kovács said in an interview with Magyar Nemzet, adding that a total of five boxers had been examined including Khelif by the International Boxing Association, and all of them “were indeed men.”

Kovács asserted that he personally reported shocking result immediately to the International Olympics Committee, “but as unbelievable as it is, they have not responded to this to this day.” The retired world champion boxer also commented that he recently spoke with former women’s world champion Mária Kovács, who bitterly remarked that in modern women’s boxing, “there is a 20 percent chance that one of the athletes will suffer a testicular injury.”

Male athletes with DSDs are sometimes actively sought out by national coaches because of their tremendous “natural” advantage over biological females.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, male runners with DSDs won all three top spots in the Women’s 800m race.

Source: International Olympic Committee Was Warned About Male Boxers, World Boxing Organization Vice President Says – Reduxx

Vee Malnar – Ironic Iconic – Tap Gallery

Having juggled a busy life of work, mothering and housework, her ideas on canvas portray a snapshot of ordinary domestic life. Kitchen sinks with piled dishes, washing baskets, mops, brooms and vaccum cleaners, all take centre stage and delight the eye with humour, colour and imagination. But there is also a political statement, either subtle or wildly over the top that is integrated into the work.

“I’d rather paint a pile of dirty dishes, than have to wash them,” says Vee.

Housework has the harsh irony that people only notice when you neglect it. It is still not considered “work” to clean the house, and women in opposite-sex marriages continue to provide more care and household duties than men. Women frequently work two jobs: the paid job they go out to accomplish and the unpaid job they undertake at home. Items utilised for our daily chores at home become irrelevant and overlooked because housework is frequently viewed as a tedious chore. Vee challenges our perceptions of our homes by elevating the commonplace and the ordinary above these assumptions of status. In some of the works, she makes references to domestic abuse and the loneliness of being a single mother, highlighting the darker side of domestic life.

Source: Vee Malnar – Ironic Iconic – Tap Gallery

Why we need different injury prevention strategies in women’s sport

Female Australian football players at the sub-elite level experience different injury patterns to their male counterparts, according to new research from the University of South Australia.

Much like elite AFLW athletes, the data shows that South Australian National Football League Women’s (SANFLW) athletes are at greater risk for concussion and ACLs than male athletes in the AFL.

The findings, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, highlight a need for targeted training, injury prevention strategies and potential match regulation changes.

Nationally and internationally, female sport often has less funding to implement injury prevention strategies.

Contact time between players is also a factor, as the research shows 75 per cent of injuries in SANFLW players resulted due to contact between players. Female Australian football has more tackles per-minute of match play than male Australian football.

Data by Yale Medicine– that first started being recorded in the 1990s– has shown female football players are between two and ten times more likely to suffer an ACL injury than their male counterparts.

The differences in male and female bodies can have significant impacts when it comes to sporting injuries, including anatomical, biomechanical, physiological and hormonal factors, according to Lyz Evans from Women in Focus Physiotherapy and Health, a female-centred physiotherapy clinic in Sydney.

A hormonal example is that research has shown there are higher rates of ACL injuries in women just before and after menstruation.

“The female body is not simply a smaller version of a male body,” Evans said, echoing calls from many in the sport science space to focus greater injury prevention efforts toward female athletes.

Source: Why we need different injury prevention strategies in women’s sport

Financial mistakes among the first signs of dementia

In the five years before a dementia diagnosis, a person’s average credit score may start to weaken and their payment delinquencies rise, New York Federal Reserve researchers found after analysing US credit reporting and Medicare data.

More than 421,000 Australians are estimated to be living with dementia in 2024, and while young people can be affected, it is more common in people aged over 65.

But symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and other related disorders (ADRD) may be appearing long before diagnosis.

Errors in financial decision making are often among the first noticeable signs caused by early-stage cognitive impairment.

And while the effects of pre-diagnosis ADRD were similar between women and men, credit scores recovered more quickly for men than women post-diagnosis.

Researchers said the gender disparity could reflect lower out-of-pocket costs associated with formal caregiving for men affected by ADRD, because wives more commonly provide informal care for a husband than vice versa.

It could also be due to the average difference in oversight over household finances between genders, or the differences the effect of living alone versus living with others has on men and women.

Source: Financial mistakes among the first signs of dementia

How child support works for me survey | Single Mother Families Australia

GET INVOLVED IN INDEPENDENT RESEARCH ON 

EXPERIENCES OF THE AUSTRALIAN CHILD SUPPORT SYSTEM

We are conducting a survey of single mothers’ and parents’ experiences of applying for and receiving child support, and how this has been affected by Government benefits and taxation systems.

Your involvement in the research will help to identify experiences of financial safety and how government policies and programs help or hinder financial safety.

We are looking for single mothers and parents who have interacted with the Australian Child Support System.

If you agree to take part in this research, please click through to this short online survey. It should take about 30 minutes to complete.

https://swinuw.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ebcWdEvZboNSd2m

The information you give will be completely anonymous, meaning it cannot be traced back to you. Your name will not be linked to anything you say as it will only be your responses to the questions which are used in the research.

If you would like more information about the survey, please contact Kay Cook at [email protected]

THANK YOU!

Source: Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

Indigenous women ‘invisible’ in family violence data | The Canberra Times | Canberra, ACT

A fear of being criminalised means Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women often do not report domestic and family violence, a Senate inquiry has been told.

Antoinette Gentile, the acting chief executive of Indigenous-run service Djirra which supports women affected by family violence, said 90 per cent of family violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women went unreported in Victoria.

Women are often reluctant to report violence for fear of being criminalised themselves, Ms Gentile told the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women.

She said almost a quarter of women Djirra worked with in 2023 were mistaken by police as perpetrators of family violence.

Ms Gentile called for a royal commission into the issue of missing and murdered First Nations women and said a complete system overhaul was needed.

Source: Indigenous women ‘invisible’ in family violence data | The Canberra Times | Canberra, ACT