title: Women’s equality—stalled or achieved? An intersectional analysis of New Zealand women’s experiences of (in)equality and perceptions of feminism

authors: Holdsworth, Roxanna Elizabeth

subjects: Intersectionality

abstract: A statement made in 2013 by Professor Judy McGregor, the former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, suggested that equality for women in New Zealand had stalled, and that little progress was being made towards achieving women’s equality. New Zealand has maintained a strong socially progressive reputation with women’s issues, as the first country where women won the right to vote, and as a consistent feature at the top levels of global equality rankings. A cultural narrative of progression is also represented in the amplified visibility of women in diverse contexts that enables individual women to have the confidence to pursue equality for themselves—consistent with Western narrative portrayals of neoliberal individualism. An awareness of the gains made by past feminist action, together with latent inequality and its (lack of) presence within women’s individual lives, can create the illusion that equality for women has been achieved, evidenced in postfeminist perspectives that reduce the need for collective approaches to women-centred issues. 
This research examined 16 women’s experiences of being a woman in 21st Century New Zealand. Women’s experiences were positioned in this study as the “starting off thought” (Harding, 1993) for understanding women’s identification with feminism. The thesis includes a discussion of New Zealand’s progressive reputation and understandings of women’s equality over time, in the context of the narrative waves of feminism and socio-cultural and political explanations of a plateau in women’s equality progression in New Zealand. The theoretical discussion focused on intersectionality to highlight heterogeneity within the category of “women”, while the methodology for this research used a narrative approach to understand the unique differences and lived experiences of the women who participated. The examination of narrative influences in the form of grand, master, and personal narratives helped to explain how participants made sense of the world around them, and the intersectional focus on generational cohorts highlighted difference among and across women based on the category of age. Diary methods followed by interviews captured the unique individual differences in lived experience. 
The use of thematic and narrative analysis in this study demonstrated participants’ sense-making and decision-making in their enactment and retelling of lived experience in association with feminism and understandings of equality, and their simultaneous experiences of privilege and oppression were key themes identified in this study. While this study first sought to uncover the ways in which women might demonstrate postfeminist complacency, as a possible cause of the plateau in moves towards equality for women, three forms of agency were identified as influencing lived experience: Constrained agency, conferred agency, and comparative agency. It seems that, for a variety of different reasons, the women challenged or accepted societal roles and behaviours based on the relationships, environments, and narrative influences that informed individual lived experience. The challenge then, is in understanding how it might be possible to continue building on the legacy of equality for women in 21st Century New Zealand.

text: Women’s equality—stalled or achieved? An intersectional analysis of New Zealand women’s experiences of (in)equality and perceptions of feminism A statement made in 2013 by Professor Judy McGregor, the former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, suggested that equality for women in New Zealand had stalled, and that little progress was being made towards achieving women’s equality. New Zealand has maintained a strong socially progressive reputation with women’s issues, as the first country where women won the right to vote, and as a consistent feature at the top levels of global equality rankings. A cultural narrative of progression is also represented in the amplified visibility of women in diverse contexts that enables individual women to have the confidence to pursue equality for themselves—consistent with Western narrative portrayals of neoliberal individualism. An awareness of the gains made by past feminist action, together with latent inequality and its (lack of) presence within women’s individual lives, can create the illusion that equality for women has been achieved, evidenced in postfeminist perspectives that reduce the need for collective approaches to women-centred issues. 
This research examined 16 women’s experiences of being a woman in 21st Century New Zealand. Women’s experiences were positioned in this study as the “starting off thought” (Harding, 1993) for understanding women’s identification with feminism. The thesis includes a discussion of New Zealand’s progressive reputation and understandings of women’s equality over time, in the context of the narrative waves of feminism and socio-cultural and political explanations of a plateau in women’s equality progression in New Zealand. The theoretical discussion focused on intersectionality to highlight heterogeneity within the category of “women”, while the methodology for this research used a narrative approach to understand the unique differences and lived experiences of the women who participated. The examination of narrative influences in the form of grand, master, and personal narratives helped to explain how participants made sense of the world around them, and the intersectional focus on generational cohorts highlighted difference among and across women based on the category of age. Diary methods followed by interviews captured the unique individual differences in lived experience. 
The use of thematic and narrative analysis in this study demonstrated participants’ sense-making and decision-making in their enactment and retelling of lived experience in association with feminism and understandings of equality, and their simultaneous experiences of privilege and oppression were key themes identified in this study. While this study first sought to uncover the ways in which women might demonstrate postfeminist complacency, as a possible cause of the plateau in moves towards equality for women, three forms of agency were identified as influencing lived experience: Constrained agency, conferred agency, and comparative agency. It seems that, for a variety of different reasons, the women challenged or accepted societal roles and behaviours based on the relationships, environments, and narrative influences that informed individual lived experience. The challenge then, is in understanding how it might be possible to continue building on the legacy of equality for women in 21st Century New Zealand.

year: 2021

title: Aspects and applications of two-time averages in open quantum Markoffian systems

authors: Carmichael, Howard J.

abstract: The use of a quantum-mechanical operator master equation for the description of an open Markoffian system is discussed in two particular aspects. In both the evaluation of operator averages at two times is a central feature. We deal first with the concept of detailed balance, so familiar from classical statistical mechanics, and hope to bring the various usages of this term under the common perspective provided by the formal generalisation of classical results.

The application of detailed balancing principles to quantum systems obeying Markoffian master equations is discussed and the formal generalisation of the classical principle of detailed balance introduced. A view of detailed balance as the macroscopic consequence of microreversibility is taken. Here the close association between two-time averages and detailed balance requires that the various properties of the former be developed as a basis to our discussions. Both operator and phase-space formulations for evaluating averages are therefore discussed, and from them the respective operator and phase-space expressions for quantum detailed balance constructed. From here the classical limit with ℏ → o is shown to correspond to the introduction of detailed balance to open quantum Markoffian systems via a literal interpretation of “quantum-mechanical Fokker-Plank processes”. The relationship of full quantum detailed balance to the detailed balancing of transitions within the energy representation, such as is encountered in the Pauli master equation, is established through introducing the concept of diagonal master equations. For these utilisation of the energy representation allows a direct identification with the Pauli situation. Finally, a generalised master equation accounting for a variety of reservoir couplings is derived, and studied in relation to both the operator detailed balance and the diagonal master equations for thermal equilibrium. It is shown that the presence of certain features in the reservoir interactions generally ensure the failure of full detailed balance, and simultaneously provides deviations from the diagonal form. These observations are to be associated with an inadequacy in the approximations of the master equation method.

A second section of this work tackles the theoretical description of a particular physical system within the framework of the master equation formalism. The concept of the open Markoffian system is applied in relation to resonance fluorescence and the properties of two-time averages used in the determination of field correlation functions. Very intense illumination, which gives rise to the dynamical Stark effect, is studied with particular interest.
 
Within the context of a quantum-mechanical master equation for incident field plus atomic scattering centre we develop a full description of the resonance fluorescence phenomenon. From a stationary autocorrelation function fluorescence spectra corresponding to arbitrary incident field strengths may be evaluated for the conditions pertaining under atomic saturation. Spectra are also available for the nonstationary field associated with the transient region of atomic dynamics. Both semiclassical and one-photon approximations are illuminated in a simple fashion. Particular interest is taken in deriving the second-order correlation function for the scattered light. This is readily available from our formalism and exhibits the interesting feature of photon-antibunching at weak incident intensities. The region of weak scattering is familiar in its description by the Lorentzian electron oscillator model and this purely quantum feature provides a possible check for Q.E.D. versus recent improved semiclassical theories. The second-order correlation function is also discussed in relation to its potential for the experimental study of fluorescence spectra, particularly those in the region of the dynamical Stark effect. Possibilities for the extraction of spectral detail presently unattainable are clearly evident.

text: Aspects and applications of two-time averages in open quantum Markoffian systems The use of a quantum-mechanical operator master equation for the description of an open Markoffian system is discussed in two particular aspects. In both the evaluation of operator averages at two times is a central feature. We deal first with the concept of detailed balance, so familiar from classical statistical mechanics, and hope to bring the various usages of this term under the common perspective provided by the formal generalisation of classical results.

The application of detailed balancing principles to quantum systems obeying Markoffian master equations is discussed and the formal generalisation of the classical principle of detailed balance introduced. A view of detailed balance as the macroscopic consequence of microreversibility is taken. Here the close association between two-time averages and detailed balance requires that the various properties of the former be developed as a basis to our discussions. Both operator and phase-space formulations for evaluating averages are therefore discussed, and from them the respective operator and phase-space expressions for quantum detailed balance constructed. From here the classical limit with ℏ → o is shown to correspond to the introduction of detailed balance to open quantum Markoffian systems via a literal interpretation of “quantum-mechanical Fokker-Plank processes”. The relationship of full quantum detailed balance to the detailed balancing of transitions within the energy representation, such as is encountered in the Pauli master equation, is established through introducing the concept of diagonal master equations. For these utilisation of the energy representation allows a direct identification with the Pauli situation. Finally, a generalised master equation accounting for a variety of reservoir couplings is derived, and studied in relation to both the operator detailed balance and the diagonal master equations for thermal equilibrium. It is shown that the presence of certain features in the reservoir interactions generally ensure the failure of full detailed balance, and simultaneously provides deviations from the diagonal form. These observations are to be associated with an inadequacy in the approximations of the master equation method.

A second section of this work tackles the theoretical description of a particular physical system within the framework of the master equation formalism. The concept of the open Markoffian system is applied in relation to resonance fluorescence and the properties of two-time averages used in the determination of field correlation functions. Very intense illumination, which gives rise to the dynamical Stark effect, is studied with particular interest.
 
Within the context of a quantum-mechanical master equation for incident field plus atomic scattering centre we develop a full description of the resonance fluorescence phenomenon. From a stationary autocorrelation function fluorescence spectra corresponding to arbitrary incident field strengths may be evaluated for the conditions pertaining under atomic saturation. Spectra are also available for the nonstationary field associated with the transient region of atomic dynamics. Both semiclassical and one-photon approximations are illuminated in a simple fashion. Particular interest is taken in deriving the second-order correlation function for the scattered light. This is readily available from our formalism and exhibits the interesting feature of photon-antibunching at weak incident intensities. The region of weak scattering is familiar in its description by the Lorentzian electron oscillator model and this purely quantum feature provides a possible check for Q.E.D. versus recent improved semiclassical theories. The second-order correlation function is also discussed in relation to its potential for the experimental study of fluorescence spectra, particularly those in the region of the dynamical Stark effect. Possibilities for the extraction of spectral detail presently unattainable are clearly evident.

year: 1975

title: An evaluation of the Raukawa Health Services Kaumatua Mirimiri Programme

authors: Gregg, Lisa

subjects: Maori

abstract: The Kaumatua Mirimiri Programme was funded as a Service to Improve Access project under a contract which ran from 1st September 2004 to 30th June 2005. Its aim was to provide a “culturally based treatment and recovery programme to restore the health and independence” of people aged 40 years and over (Pinnacle Group Ltd, 2004a, p.1). However, as the service specification in the contract made clear, the programme was not designed be exclusive: it has attracted younger as well as older people, non-Māori as well as Māori, and people seeking help for a wide range of ailments and pain.

text: An evaluation of the Raukawa Health Services Kaumatua Mirimiri Programme The Kaumatua Mirimiri Programme was funded as a Service to Improve Access project under a contract which ran from 1st September 2004 to 30th June 2005. Its aim was to provide a “culturally based treatment and recovery programme to restore the health and independence” of people aged 40 years and over (Pinnacle Group Ltd, 2004a, p.1). However, as the service specification in the contract made clear, the programme was not designed be exclusive: it has attracted younger as well as older people, non-Māori as well as Māori, and people seeking help for a wide range of ailments and pain.

year: 2006-03