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In the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2006 Global Gender Gap report, Australia was highlighted as a world leader in closing the gender gap. With reference to the Economic Participation and Opportunity Index (one of four components in the WEF Gender Gap Index (GGI)), this article assesses whether or not Australia is deserving of this recognition. Closer analysis shows that convergence in the participation gap flowed from increased participation in part-time, low-paid, and precarious jobs. Research also shows that women's entry into professional jobs has led to the feminization of some positions and that vertical segregation remains an ongoing problem. In highlighting these disparities, this article questions the capacity of the GGI to provide an adequate understanding of women's labor market participation and economic attainment.Gender wage gap, part-time work, gender inequality, labor market participation, segmentation,

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This is a reflexive account of the messiness experienced by a Persian-Australian doctoral researcher interviewing social work and human service practitioners and people seeking asylum in Germany. This data collection was part of a cross-national comparative study of the impacts of policy on the experiences and perceptions of people seeking asylum and social work and human service practitioners in Bavaria and Western Australia. Through interview stories and the work of others, this article offers a first person account of the complexities, ambiguities and dilemmas that can occur before, during and after data collection, how these were navigated through the use of Finlay's (2012) five lenses for the reflexive interviewer, and some of the lessons learnt.

As social work engages with feminism and postmodernism, the stringent dictates of femininity that underpin traditional social work with young women have been challenged. Social workers are asked to listen to young women's experiences of creating female subjectivities and to respect young women as the authors of their own gender identities. This article presents the findings of feminist interpretive research with six 14 to 15-year-old young women. Emphasizing the discourse of difference and its intersection with family, the mass media, peers, and fashion, the young women's stories alert social workers to the many ways in which young women negotiate, construct, and resist "the feminine." Keywords: femininity; young women; postmodernism; interpretive researchSince the beginning of social work, representations of women as the embodiment of an essentialized femininity have been prominent. Beginning in the mid-19th century, portrayals of women as the "keepers of morals," the symbols of "man's spiritual and material deliverance," and the means of sanitizing poverty (McCrone, 1976) were pivotal in justifying and maintaining social work's position as the ameliorator of society's "ills" (Trice, 1998). It was through a woman's nurturance as a client or worker, her unfailing tenderness and love, that the barbaric tendencies and vices of the industrialized world would ultimately be curbed. A woman's femininity was the "humanizer," the pacifier of man, "the beast."At the turn of the century, as social work fought for legitimation and professionalization through the adoption of psychological and biomedical knowledge, "malestream" (a term I use throughout this article to describe knowledge systems that are dominated by patriarchal ways of knowing and being in the world; see Moi, 1999) prescriptions of femininity became enshrined within the development of social work theory and practice. From