LECTURE 7

31 March 2011

Guest Lecturer: Mandy Yap, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research

International literature clearly demonstrates the potential for gender-based inequalities to constrain development processes. Not only does an unequal distribution of resources negatively impact on those with relatively low socioeconomic outcomes, but it can also adversely affect child growth and development. Empirical analysis in Australia has shown a complex picture with regards to gender based inequality with Indigenous females tending to have higher levels of education participation and attainment but Indigenous males having greater access to economic resources. However, this analysis has been restricted to data lacking in robust measures of subjective and objective wellbeing. In the first part of this lecture, we review the literature on gender based inequality both in an international context and also as it relates to Indigenous Australians. Based on this literature, the second part of the lecture considers different ways in which Indigenous males and females rate the various measures of wellbeing in terms of importance. In the final part of the lecture, two aspects of wellbeing in considered - Indigenous experience of violence and Indigenous empowerment.