A large slice of humble pie

Since my introductory seminar I've had to tuck myself in even closer to the PhD table and reach for a slice of humble pie....with cream (and ice-cream). I went back to basics to examine exactly what kind of feminism I espouse. I don't like labels and I don't like labelling, but it all comes down to the dreaded epistemology and ontology.

Turning to epistemology, what bothers me is that I do not believe that we can ever make objective  assessments: our personal/cultural bias always informs the lens by which we observe phenomena. However, this means that I am left with an absence of a principled, normative criteria for evaluating beliefs from different epistemological perspectives. In philosophical circles this is called the bias paradox.

Different types of feminisms have different approaches to this paradox:

• Liberal feminists believe that men and women are equal and that what's needed is bureaucratic reform, i.e. changes to law and procedures, to eliminate discrimination and prejudice. If I were a liberal feminist I would be arguing that women's voices should be heard, I would listening to those voices, and then arguing for system reform.
• Revolutionary feminists e.g. radical, Marxist, and eco feminists believe that women are united around a common sisterhood and that, in the case of radical feminists, women are essentially different from men. If I were a revolutionary feminist, I'd be listening to the unique voices of women, seeking to revalue women's knowledge, and arguing for radical changes that value feminine particularity. 
• Postmodern feminists believe that gender is discursively produced, and that the subject is a product of history and culture. If I was a postmodern feminist I would be seeking to recognise the experiences of multiple voices, looking at how the symbolic constructions of femininity and masculinity are created and analysing who is served by these constructions. Following Kristeva, I would also be examining how people resist these constructions. 
• Poststructuralist feminists similarly believe that gender is discursively produced, and that the subject is a product of history and culture, but they go one step further. If I were a poststructuralist feminist I would be doing most of the activities of the postmodern feminists, but I would be pointing out that resistance is also socially constructed. The end result for both postmodern and poststructuralist feminists is the presentation of new knowledge that contributes to a political project.

Please forgive my truncated version of very complex theory. What I've done is try to understand what my desired aim is and align it to a feminism. But I'm afraid that I am a "patchwork feminist" which makes this alignment all the more difficult.

Call me a "Traditional Critical Feminist". What the fuck!

Well, well well. Today I delivered my Introductory Seminar (one of the university's requirements for PhD students).

Today I was labelled as a "Traditional Critical Feminist". What the fuck!

Let's unpack the bulging suitcase:

1. "Traditional feminism" harks back to the suffragettes. It suggests to me the fight to ensure that women have equal access to the vote, to the workplace, to the polity. It's the notion that men and women should be treated as equal. Moreover, that as a feminist I am working towards this equality. Stop right there. I do not believe this is the case: I believe that people are different. What I want to do is to demonstrate that our (patriarchal) public sector organisations are modelled around masculine ideas and structures. Moreover, I want to explore the impact of these organisations on women and others who don't fit within the construct of the "ideal employee". 
2. I am a discourse analyst from the perspective that I enjoy looking at how we speak and write about things and investigating what is behind the notions that we take for granted. 
3. Bringing the 'traditional' together with the 'critical'  suggests that I'm analysing discourse in the hopes that I will contribute to equality. Wrong buddy! Dead wrong! 

What I am seeking to do is question a norm. It's true that the fact that I'm sitting here right now at university undertaking a PhD is due to the efforts of traditional feminists. However, my point is that the university is modelled around masculine concepts. For example, the PhD is an individualistic undertaking. I can't do my PhD with others - it MUST be undertaken by me within a framework that:

• takes absolutely no account of my working life (apart from the fact that I can do my degree part-time), however, the courses that are conducted as part of my degree are held during the day - during work hours. This means that I have to negotiate time off work to enable me to full my study commitments. The additional research students seminars offered by the uni are all held during the day. I CAN'T access them, unless of course they happen to coincide with the one day off a week that my work affords me. 
• takes absolutely no account of my personal circumstances. My degree has a timetable that I have to work towards. My husbands gets ill, my elderly parents need my care, my grandchildren need minding. Too bad - we'll give you some time off but then you'd better obey. You problems are your problems - we don't want to know about it. Just get your work done on time.

I don't think this attitude is good enough. I want to trash the joint.

It's SO HARD studying part-time.....

I's so very difficult studying part-time, especially when you LOVE your topic and just want the space to roll up your sleeves a DO IT!

I am in the ZONE today, working away at university catching up on something was was bugging the be-jeppers out of me, and that was why the then Public Service and Merit Protection Commission started publishing the whole-of-Service Workplace Diversity Reports (these reports started in 1998 as a result of the EEO provisions contains in the newly amended section 22B of the Public Service Act 1922), and then why the reports stopped in 2003. I can see the official reason spelled out in the State of the Service 2002 - 2003 report, but still I wonder... A simple answer would be to "save the trees", which is true, but I wonder what an incorporated focus has meant???

I wish I was able to study full-time: able to work away in my office here at the uni, able to engage in conversations on a daily basis with my academic colleagues. But I am required (and I require) to have an income that supports my family, and I must divide myself between work and study. 

 

Introductory Seminar and academic supervisors

This is a big week for me at university.

On Friday I'm delivering my Introductory Seminar to a group of academics in my faculty. What? I hear you say, scratching your heads. Well, it's like this ... when you do a doctorate at my university, you not only have to complete coursework, undertake a research project, and draft a thesis about your research project, but you also have to deliver three seminars. The Introductory Seminar is all about introducing yourself and your research topic to the faculty, the Conformation Seminar is all about demonstrating to the academic community that you are now ready and able to start your research in earnest, and the Final Seminar is about presenting the results of your research back to the academics.

So? I hear you say, surely the Introductory Seminar will be a walk in the park? Weeeelllllll.....the thing of it is that you present on your thesis topic and the academics ask you why you have chosen such and such a method, have you thought of such and such an approach. I also understand that they question your understanding of the dreaded ontology and epistemology.

But I do believe that I have a surprise for the academics. You see I want to ask them two questions. The first will be about whether I should interview men as well as women (thereby heading a likely question off at the pass), and the second is about whether my research project sounds more like a PhD than a doctorate (my academic supervisors believe that I'm doing a PhD not a doctorate, but I'd like to get the opinion of others before I make this change).  

Speaking of academic supervisors, I now have two supervisors with interest in my topic. The primary supervisor I will call "A" and a secondary supervisor who I will call "B". I also have a meeting tomorrow with both supervisors, and I'm kind of steeling myself for this because I've been a wee bit rebellious.

We meet once a month, and my task after our last meeting was to revise my literary review, specifically to add more about public administration and emotional labour. Only, when I went away from the meeting I realised that I needed more context around women's employment experience in the APS, so I decided that I would write a chapter on this topic. I had three weeks to do this, and I didn't quite finish the exercise (I have to send my written work to my supervisors one week before I am due to meet with them). During this time I also participated in a seminar by a most wonderful academic who broadened my thinking about HOW I write my thesis, so I decided to write the history chapter as a NARRATIVE (GULP). I wonder what their reaction will be????

Why it's important that you are simpatico with your paid work organisation

The beauty of working in the Department was that I totally 'got' health and family services. My extended family was made up of GPs and nurses, and we had had plenty of conversations about the government's role in health care, the phamaeceutical benefits scheme, the role of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and improving health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. My personal values accorded with working towards achieving good health outcomes for all Australians - no problem.

The only problem was that the APS 4 position involved the recruitment of senior executives into the Department, and once again I was faced with servility. I was a junior staff member charged with searching around to find 'suitable' housing for senior people, and sourcing 'suitable' schools for their children. This was very interesting to me especially in light of the fact that the paid workplace is said to be separate from the personal sphere... Enough said.

Within a month or so, I was acting in an APS5 role in the administration of the graduate program, specifically, I was working on the graduate learning and development side of things. I liked this role, as life-long learning is one of my personal values, and within weeks I was to deliver and facilitate a week-long orientation course for a new batch of graduates. A year later I had been promoted to the APS6 level and was now assisting the EL1 graduate recruitment manager with graduate recruitment and development. I was now well in my 'groove' and was implementing courses for graduates about the nature of being a public servant, contracting in service providers to undertake more innovative graduate recruitment practices, and developing relationships with the Department's Indigenous staff network to help boost the representation and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates. When the graduate recruitment manager left, I was asked to act in her stead, and was in this role for another 12 months, during which time the graduate intake doubled with the introduction of two recruitment processes per annum.  

Then the bottom of my world dropped out. My daughter Alice, then aged 22, had been to a party at night where illicit drugs were present, and allegedly she had taken them. My husband and I received a phone call at work at 10 am to learn that Alice was in hospital in a bad way. We travelled to the hospital in silence, only to learn that she had died.

My working history and why it's important that you are simpatico with your paid work organisation

The fourth chapter of my working life is feminist related. I graduated from the Australian National University with B.A (Hons) Women's Studies and English Literature in 1997, and started work in an abortion clinic. Now, as a feminist, and a person committed to the rights of women, I thought that this role (which was on the reception desk), would not be difficult for me. I was a dab hand at calculating pregnancy duration, was pretty good at squeezing in appointments, and could walk past the anti-abortion protesters outside the building like the best of them. But what I could not handle was the level of anxiety and grief I saw at the clinic. NOBODY came into the clinic in a blaze manner. I saw women there, women and their husbands, women and their fiancees, women and their children, women and their children and their mothers, and what I learned was that abortion is a matter of grave consideration, a decision not made easily. At the end of the day, I couldn't shrug off patient's feelings, and I left before my first two weeks was up. The mis-alignment I experienced with the job at the abortion clinic was not about a clash of values, rather, it was about my (in)ability to distance myself from intense emotions.

My second post-uni job was at the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL), undertaking an administrative assistant role. I owe a lot to WEL and they owe something to me. Firstly, I had not had a true 'administrative' job role before. There was no meeting and greeting involved, as in the receptionist roles I'd had in the past. Instead it was about financial management, membership, and keeping an eye on the issues of the day. In typical Karen-style I also redid the filing system and cross referenced everything. I learned to use a computer for more than just writing, as well as a fax machine (such daring technology!). I guess I would have worked part-time at WEL for 12-months, but I never did receive my superannuation payment, and yes, I realise that I MUST chase this up.

I left WEL to join the Australian Public Service in 1998 firstly working at the Attorney General's Department as a temporary junior legislative editor. While in this position I expressed interest in participating in a Department's Women's Forum, and it was here that my interest in human resources (HR) began. The women's forum discussed a number of things, such as increasing the number of women lawyers, differential treatment of women and men, workforce planning, succession management, learning and development opportunities. My interest in HR was piqued, and I applied for an APS4 position in HR at the then Department of Health and Family Services.

Why it's important that you are simpatico with your paid work organisation

So here's a pause in my diatribe on workforce planning (phew! you say!). And here's a reflection on why it is so important to work in a workplace whose business or mandate it is accords with your own values, personality, and interest.

I've had a strange paid work history. The first chapter involves working for my family. My first paid job was cleaning my father-in-law's medical surgery. Twice a week at around 8pm I would go to his surgery to vacuum, polish and dust. I guess I would have been around 18 years old at the time and a mother of one. I wasn't driving and my husband drove me there and back. My second job was as my brother-in-law's medical practice manager. This time I was 24, had four children, and was now driving. I enjoyed this role and found that it easily fitted into my role as wife and mother. My third role involved working as one of my father-in-law's medical receptionists. On one occasion he asked me to come into his office to retrieve something or another, and I walked in to see a patient pointing his penis at my father-in-law, who was gazing intently on what must have been the bone of contention.  

The second chapter involves working as a casual ACT Public Servant, again as a medical receptionist. This was at the time then Canberra's public health centres were on the wain. My various roles in a number of Belconnen health centres included filing, archiving (in a cupboard!!!), operating a switchboard, administering a spectacles scheme, and of course, answering patient enquiries. Two principle memories remain: first, I was told that visiting specialists came once a week and my role when they came was to make and serve them cups of tea. This really got in my craw as it reminded me of the servile secretary image of the 50s and 60s, anyway, word of my rebellion must have reached the ears of the specialist (I wonder if he was an ear, nose, and throat man?) such that one day he made a big song and dance about making me a cup of tea. I was chastened, but still passively-aggressively rebellious. Another time there was a very angry receptionist who used to come into the office where I worked and bang files down on the desk and talk nastily about patients and doctors. Her behaviour was making literally making me ill. So one day I decided to raise it with her by saying, "Ros, can I talk with you a moment? I just want you to know that when you come in here and xxxx it makes me feel really tense and quite upset. What's going on for you?" and do you know what?  She started to cry and then tell me about what was driving her behaviour. Suffice it to say she never behaved angrily again, and from that moment there was nothing but respect between us. This was to be a powerful, early lesson for me.

The third chapter involves paid work during my undergraduate studies. To make money I wrote for the university newspaper, which paid $40 an article, and also tutored a year 12 student in essay writing. I really enjoyed this challenge, and am proud to say that her confidence grew in proportion to her marks.