title: Women sex workers’ embodied experiences of sport, exercise and physical leisure in Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: O'Leary, Grace

subjects: Sex Work

abstract: This thesis focuses on women’s bodies that occupy and move in and between spaces of sex work and sport, exercise and physical leisure. Extending the literature that continues to describe women sex workers as victims, this thesis gives voice to women’s everyday lived experiences, capturing the complex and multilayered realities of their lives.
Adopting an ethnographic approach, I provide space for women sex workers to share their experiences of sport, exercise and physical leisure. Drawing on interviews with 17 women sex workers living in Aotearoa New Zealand, and observations at sex work places including clubs, brothels and New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC) centres, I explore how women sex workers negotiate their moving bodies in spaces of sport, exercise and physical leisure.

Findings are organised into three empirical chapters, each engaging with a different theory to inform the analysis. The first empirical chapter offers a feminist engagement with Pierre Bourdieu to provide an intersectional mapping of the diverse experiences of sport, exercise, and physical leisure that have impacted women’s embodiment from childhood through to adolescence and adulthood. The second chapter draws upon Michel Foucault’s theories of power, technologies, and discourses to examine how institutions of sex work and sport influence bodies, and how women sex workers embody multiple, shifting, and sometimes contradictory subject positions in relation to discourses of sex work and wider social discourses of femininity. The third chapter engages with feminist theories of emotion and affect to understand how disgust, shame, and pride construct affective bodies and spaces that are (inter)personal, collective, and political.

The combination of feminist poststructuralist theories and reflexive, embodied methodologies provides a platform for accessing women sex workers’ knowledges and experiences of gender and sex across work and sporting spaces. This research is situated at the intersections of sport, sex work, and women’s bodies, with insights and knowledge that promote inclusion and understanding of the mutually constitutive relationships between them.

text: Women sex workers’ embodied experiences of sport, exercise and physical leisure in Aotearoa New Zealand This thesis focuses on women’s bodies that occupy and move in and between spaces of sex work and sport, exercise and physical leisure. Extending the literature that continues to describe women sex workers as victims, this thesis gives voice to women’s everyday lived experiences, capturing the complex and multilayered realities of their lives.
Adopting an ethnographic approach, I provide space for women sex workers to share their experiences of sport, exercise and physical leisure. Drawing on interviews with 17 women sex workers living in Aotearoa New Zealand, and observations at sex work places including clubs, brothels and New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC) centres, I explore how women sex workers negotiate their moving bodies in spaces of sport, exercise and physical leisure.

Findings are organised into three empirical chapters, each engaging with a different theory to inform the analysis. The first empirical chapter offers a feminist engagement with Pierre Bourdieu to provide an intersectional mapping of the diverse experiences of sport, exercise, and physical leisure that have impacted women’s embodiment from childhood through to adolescence and adulthood. The second chapter draws upon Michel Foucault’s theories of power, technologies, and discourses to examine how institutions of sex work and sport influence bodies, and how women sex workers embody multiple, shifting, and sometimes contradictory subject positions in relation to discourses of sex work and wider social discourses of femininity. The third chapter engages with feminist theories of emotion and affect to understand how disgust, shame, and pride construct affective bodies and spaces that are (inter)personal, collective, and political.

The combination of feminist poststructuralist theories and reflexive, embodied methodologies provides a platform for accessing women sex workers’ knowledges and experiences of gender and sex across work and sporting spaces. This research is situated at the intersections of sport, sex work, and women’s bodies, with insights and knowledge that promote inclusion and understanding of the mutually constitutive relationships between them.

year: 2019

title: Literature review on motor skill and physical activity in preschool children in New Zealand

authors: Ali, Ajmol

subjects: Physical Literacy

abstract: Children’s physical activity levels have decreased significantly over the past 20 - 30 years, coinciding with obesity rates reaching epidemic levels. There is little research into typically developing preschool (birth to 5 year-olds) child- ren’s physical activity, with the majority of research focusing on children at risk of motor skill or neurological deficiencies. This review examines current research into young children’s development, especially motor development and physical activity, the effectiveness of intervention programmes for pro- moting children’s physical development and the various methods used to as- sess physical development. A decrease in children’s physical activity levels has coincided with an increase in obesity rates. Further research is needed to de- termine culturally and contextually appropriate and effective interventions for preschool children. Areas for further research include preschool children’s physical activity, particularly in regards to movement guidelines and require- ments for this age-group and ways to overcome potential barriers to meeting physical activity requirements. Young children’s physical activity and motor skill proficiency may be an important predictor of later-life physically active behaviors. Physical literacy and physical activity interventions within early childhood education could potentially support academic skills as well as phy- sical skills and behaviors.

text: Literature review on motor skill and physical activity in preschool children in New Zealand Children’s physical activity levels have decreased significantly over the past 20 - 30 years, coinciding with obesity rates reaching epidemic levels. There is little research into typically developing preschool (birth to 5 year-olds) child- ren’s physical activity, with the majority of research focusing on children at risk of motor skill or neurological deficiencies. This review examines current research into young children’s development, especially motor development and physical activity, the effectiveness of intervention programmes for pro- moting children’s physical development and the various methods used to as- sess physical development. A decrease in children’s physical activity levels has coincided with an increase in obesity rates. Further research is needed to de- termine culturally and contextually appropriate and effective interventions for preschool children. Areas for further research include preschool children’s physical activity, particularly in regards to movement guidelines and require- ments for this age-group and ways to overcome potential barriers to meeting physical activity requirements. Young children’s physical activity and motor skill proficiency may be an important predictor of later-life physically active behaviors. Physical literacy and physical activity interventions within early childhood education could potentially support academic skills as well as phy- sical skills and behaviors.

year: 2017

title: The peopling and development of Aotearoa New Zealand: A demographic history, 1769-2020

authors: Pool, Ian

subjects: Aotearoa

abstract: This unpublished manuscript is the first demographic history of Aotearoa New Zealand, integrating 250 years of Māori and non-Māori data. It explores how development, in the broadest social, cultural and economic sense drove population changes, but was in turn driven by demographic factors. Based on extensively referenced research and analysis, the timeline starts with the earliest European settlement and finishes with the multicultural and aging society of the first decades of the twenty-first century.  It encompasses momentous changes, including: successive waves of migration, European settler demographic dominance occurring rapidly through natural increase, Māori nineteenth century cultural devastation and population decline, and twentieth-century resurgence, the Māori rural/urban exodus beginning in the 1940s, and the post-war non-Māori baby boom and baby bust. At each stage, this book demonstrates how profoundly the story of Aotearoa New Zealand is also the demographic story of its peopling.

text: The peopling and development of Aotearoa New Zealand: A demographic history, 1769-2020 This unpublished manuscript is the first demographic history of Aotearoa New Zealand, integrating 250 years of Māori and non-Māori data. It explores how development, in the broadest social, cultural and economic sense drove population changes, but was in turn driven by demographic factors. Based on extensively referenced research and analysis, the timeline starts with the earliest European settlement and finishes with the multicultural and aging society of the first decades of the twenty-first century.  It encompasses momentous changes, including: successive waves of migration, European settler demographic dominance occurring rapidly through natural increase, Māori nineteenth century cultural devastation and population decline, and twentieth-century resurgence, the Māori rural/urban exodus beginning in the 1940s, and the post-war non-Māori baby boom and baby bust. At each stage, this book demonstrates how profoundly the story of Aotearoa New Zealand is also the demographic story of its peopling.

year: 2026