title: Menstrual Tracking, Fitness Tracking and Body Work: Digital Tracking Tools and Their Use in Optimising Health, Beauty, Wellness and the Aesthetic Self

authors: Friedlander, Anna

abstract: Digital self-tracking tools can be part of body work to measure, monitor, and optimise progress towards idealised versions of the self. Fitness and calorie trackers are obvious examples but menstrual tracking apps, which can track a large range of bodily ‘symptoms’, can also be part of body work. In this article, I present accounts of young people’s menstrual and fitness tracking experiences from existing literature, illustrating how both types of trackers can function as part of their users’ body work. I interweave these stories with an autoethnographic account of my own embodied experiences with and through menstrual and fitness tracking apps. I explore the ways in which health, beauty, and wellness can become enmeshed in self-tracking practices; how emotions, stress, and sleep can become personal problems to solve; how tracking tools can make body work feel more ‘real’; and the mutual but asymmetrical shaping of digital tracking tools and their users. Though there is an existing body of work on young people’s experiences of digital self-tracking tools more generally (particularly health and fitness tracking tools), young people’s use of menstrual tracking apps is a relatively understudied phenomenon to date. The themes identified in this article point towards possible avenues for future research.

text: Menstrual Tracking, Fitness Tracking and Body Work: Digital Tracking Tools and Their Use in Optimising Health, Beauty, Wellness and the Aesthetic Self Digital self-tracking tools can be part of body work to measure, monitor, and optimise progress towards idealised versions of the self. Fitness and calorie trackers are obvious examples but menstrual tracking apps, which can track a large range of bodily ‘symptoms’, can also be part of body work. In this article, I present accounts of young people’s menstrual and fitness tracking experiences from existing literature, illustrating how both types of trackers can function as part of their users’ body work. I interweave these stories with an autoethnographic account of my own embodied experiences with and through menstrual and fitness tracking apps. I explore the ways in which health, beauty, and wellness can become enmeshed in self-tracking practices; how emotions, stress, and sleep can become personal problems to solve; how tracking tools can make body work feel more ‘real’; and the mutual but asymmetrical shaping of digital tracking tools and their users. Though there is an existing body of work on young people’s experiences of digital self-tracking tools more generally (particularly health and fitness tracking tools), young people’s use of menstrual tracking apps is a relatively understudied phenomenon to date. The themes identified in this article point towards possible avenues for future research.

year: 2023-05-18

title: Women and Careers: New Zealand Women's Engagement in Career and Family Planning

authors: Ussher, Sarah Rosemary

subjects: Women

abstract: This study investigated the extent women engage in career planning, and whether making considerations to have children would influence their career plans. Relationships with other variables were examined with career and family planning, which included proactive personality, subjective career success, and commitment and salience of women’s careers and role as a parent.
One hundred and seventy three women who did not have children participated in this study by completing an online survey. Significant relationships were found between career planning and proactive personality, subjective career success, career commitment and career salience importance of career in life and importance of work over career. Family planning was found to be positively related to parental role commitment and salience, and negatively to career commitment, proactive personality, and career salience. Career planning was found to have no relationship with family planning, parental role commitment and salience, and career salience importance of career over family. Proactive personality was positively related to subjective career success, career commitment, and career salience. Age and education were not found to be related to career planning, but were negatively related to family planning.
These results suggest that women feel there is a need to choose between a career and a family. My research found that women with high parental role commitment and salience were more likely to change their career plans to accommodate having children. Whereas, women with high career commitment and salience, were less likely to change their career plans to accommodate children. My research overall found that women do engage in career planning, and whether a woman’s career plans were altered due to considering children, was dependent on the woman’s preference for a family over a career, or a career over a family, which indicated whether a woman preferred to plan a career around a family or a family around a career.
The findings within this thesis add knowledge to the field of women and careers, as well as suggests practitioners to discuss with female clients and employees that women do not need to choose between a career and a family, and that considering family responsibilities in career plans is a way to make balancing a career and a family, in theory, more manageable. This research offers practical recommendations for career counsellors and organisations to help effectively support female clients and employees manage their career and career aspirations, while also taking into account women’s concerns about managing their career responsibilities along with their maternal responsibilities.
Implications for future career management programs to consider are suggested to encourage and support female employees and clients for the effective planning of their career, and taking into account a contingency plan for the possibility of parenthood in their future. Furthermore, examining women’s lifestyle preferences, could possibly disclose indicators of women who may have an increased likelihood of limiting their career responsibilities, due to the concern of managing career and childcare responsibilities.

text: Women and Careers: New Zealand Women's Engagement in Career and Family Planning This study investigated the extent women engage in career planning, and whether making considerations to have children would influence their career plans. Relationships with other variables were examined with career and family planning, which included proactive personality, subjective career success, and commitment and salience of women’s careers and role as a parent.
One hundred and seventy three women who did not have children participated in this study by completing an online survey. Significant relationships were found between career planning and proactive personality, subjective career success, career commitment and career salience importance of career in life and importance of work over career. Family planning was found to be positively related to parental role commitment and salience, and negatively to career commitment, proactive personality, and career salience. Career planning was found to have no relationship with family planning, parental role commitment and salience, and career salience importance of career over family. Proactive personality was positively related to subjective career success, career commitment, and career salience. Age and education were not found to be related to career planning, but were negatively related to family planning.
These results suggest that women feel there is a need to choose between a career and a family. My research found that women with high parental role commitment and salience were more likely to change their career plans to accommodate having children. Whereas, women with high career commitment and salience, were less likely to change their career plans to accommodate children. My research overall found that women do engage in career planning, and whether a woman’s career plans were altered due to considering children, was dependent on the woman’s preference for a family over a career, or a career over a family, which indicated whether a woman preferred to plan a career around a family or a family around a career.
The findings within this thesis add knowledge to the field of women and careers, as well as suggests practitioners to discuss with female clients and employees that women do not need to choose between a career and a family, and that considering family responsibilities in career plans is a way to make balancing a career and a family, in theory, more manageable. This research offers practical recommendations for career counsellors and organisations to help effectively support female clients and employees manage their career and career aspirations, while also taking into account women’s concerns about managing their career responsibilities along with their maternal responsibilities.
Implications for future career management programs to consider are suggested to encourage and support female employees and clients for the effective planning of their career, and taking into account a contingency plan for the possibility of parenthood in their future. Furthermore, examining women’s lifestyle preferences, could possibly disclose indicators of women who may have an increased likelihood of limiting their career responsibilities, due to the concern of managing career and childcare responsibilities.

year: 2015

title: The Application of Critical Discourse Theory: A Criterion-Referenced Analysis of Reports Relating to Language Revitalisation in Australia and New Zealand

authors: Lewis, Roger Brian

subjects: te reo Māori

abstract: The discipline of language policy and planning (LPP) is often proposed as a viable tool for language revitalisation. However, the conventional paradigm upon which LPP is based is inadequate for such an inherently political, contentious and problematic area of social policy, and does not address the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourse that is at the very core of language revitalisation efforts. It is therefore argued here that LPP needs to be explicitly underpinned by critical discourse theory (CDT) if it is to be of genuine use to those involved in language revitalisation efforts, particularly to grass roots language activists. Following an introductory chapter which provides a background to the research and a rationale for it (Chapter 1), there is a critical review of selected literature on LPP and CDT, a review which ends by proposing a list of criteria which, it is argued, can be used to determine the extent to which discourse that is intended to be counter-hegemonic adheres to the principles of effective counter-hegemonic discourse as outlined in the literature on CDT (Chapter 2). In the following three chapters (Chapters 3, 4 & 5), these criteria are applied to the analysis of three recent reports that have a direct bearing on indigenous language revitalisation in Australia (Our Land Our Languages) and New Zealand (Ko Aotearoa Tēnei and Te Reo Mauriora). The first of these reports is found to adhere very closely to the criteria; the second less so; the third almost not at all. The different ways in which each of these reports has been received would tend to support the hypothesis that, other things being equal, the more closely a text of this type conforms to the criteria - that is, the more closely it is aligned to the fundamental principles of effective counter-hegemonic discourse as outlined in CDT - the more likely it is to be positively received and, therefore, to represent an effective challenge to the existing hegemony. The overall conclusion is that CDT can not only assist language activists by providing a basis for determining how successful counter-hegemonic discourse is likely to be in achieving its aims but has the potential to provide LPP with a secure theoretical foundation (Chapter 6).

text: The Application of Critical Discourse Theory: A Criterion-Referenced Analysis of Reports Relating to Language Revitalisation in Australia and New Zealand The discipline of language policy and planning (LPP) is often proposed as a viable tool for language revitalisation. However, the conventional paradigm upon which LPP is based is inadequate for such an inherently political, contentious and problematic area of social policy, and does not address the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourse that is at the very core of language revitalisation efforts. It is therefore argued here that LPP needs to be explicitly underpinned by critical discourse theory (CDT) if it is to be of genuine use to those involved in language revitalisation efforts, particularly to grass roots language activists. Following an introductory chapter which provides a background to the research and a rationale for it (Chapter 1), there is a critical review of selected literature on LPP and CDT, a review which ends by proposing a list of criteria which, it is argued, can be used to determine the extent to which discourse that is intended to be counter-hegemonic adheres to the principles of effective counter-hegemonic discourse as outlined in the literature on CDT (Chapter 2). In the following three chapters (Chapters 3, 4 & 5), these criteria are applied to the analysis of three recent reports that have a direct bearing on indigenous language revitalisation in Australia (Our Land Our Languages) and New Zealand (Ko Aotearoa Tēnei and Te Reo Mauriora). The first of these reports is found to adhere very closely to the criteria; the second less so; the third almost not at all. The different ways in which each of these reports has been received would tend to support the hypothesis that, other things being equal, the more closely a text of this type conforms to the criteria - that is, the more closely it is aligned to the fundamental principles of effective counter-hegemonic discourse as outlined in CDT - the more likely it is to be positively received and, therefore, to represent an effective challenge to the existing hegemony. The overall conclusion is that CDT can not only assist language activists by providing a basis for determining how successful counter-hegemonic discourse is likely to be in achieving its aims but has the potential to provide LPP with a secure theoretical foundation (Chapter 6).

year: 2014