They're all fabulous and wonderful! How to figure out what's real in an inflated letter of recommendation

Feb 25, 2020 13:06 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

Over the decades that Ive worked in universities, Ive watched academic letters of reference become increasingly inflated. And letter inflation goes beyond the academy; friends who hire in business say they, too, have...

South Africa's spaza shops: how regulatory avoidance harms informal workers

Feb 25, 2020 12:52 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

Small informal retailers are ubiquitous feature of any developing country urban landscape. Known as spaza shops in South Africa, they are an important, even vital, component in the townships. Numbering over 100,000 across...

Coronavirus: The latest disease to spur mistrust, fear and racism

Feb 13, 2020 00:08 am UTC| Insights & Views Life Health

With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, China, stories of courage and strength have captured our collective attention as the disease spreads. We have also seen large-scale efforts in China to...

Why we aren't closing the gap: a failure to account for 'cultural counterfactuals'

Feb 13, 2020 00:07 am UTC| Insights & Views Life

Australias 12th Closing the Gap report, published yesterday, shows by most socio-economic measures Indigenous Australians continue to lag behind the rest of the population. Only two of seven targets early education and...

Bias starts early – most books in childcare centres have white, middle-class heroes

Feb 10, 2020 23:52 pm UTC| Life

Only 18% of books available in four Australian childcare centres include non-white characters. Animal characters make up around half the books available, with the animals largely leading lives, and adhering to values, of...

'Death by a thousand cuts': women of colour in science face a subtly hostile work environment

Feb 10, 2020 23:49 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

Its hard for women to succeed in science. Our research shows its even harder for women of colour. We interviewed women of colour working in scientific and technical organisations across Australia about their...

Why should my child take swimming lessons? And what do they need to know?

Feb 09, 2020 23:48 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

Drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional death from injury worldwide. From July 2018 to June 2019, 276 people drowned across Australia a 10% increase on the previous year. Among those were 19 children under...