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The impact of feminist scholarship on
Australian political science
Convened by Lisa Hill, University of Adelaide
Lisa Hill will introduce a discussion of the impact or lack of impact of feminist
scholarship on Australian political science over the last two decades by reference
to the Australian Journal of Political Science.
In 1999 Drs Chappell, Curtin and Hill conducted a gender audit of the Australian
Journal of Political Science 1979-1998 and made a number of preliminary findings.
It was intended as a follow-up to a similar audit that had been undertaken twenty
years earlier by Marian Sawer. Our chief goal was to discover if there had been
any change in the journal's record of publishing and reviewing the work of women
in the discipline. In general, findings were fairly disappointing. Despite the
growth of women and politics as a legitimate academic pursuit, a minimal number
of works written by and about women and politics were being chosen for publication
by AJPS. Despite an isolated period of improvement, the rate of articles written
by women increased by only 1.8 percentage points in a twenty year period. Though
the feminist challenge to the traditional paradigm of political science has
definitely made its mark in Australia, it has not been as effective as its many
of its hardworking promulgators had hoped. Participants will be asked to explore
the reasons for lack of impact in this discipline and in this country. Panel
members will include:
Marian Sawer, Australian National University
Mary Walsh, University of Canberra
Liz van Acker, Griffith University
Pat Brewer, School of Management & Policy, University
of Canberra
Has identity politics shifted feminism to the right?
Identity is central in the development of political movements. It operates at
both the level of the individual and the collectivity. Yet the content of such
an identity can be located anywhere within the political spectrum. It has been
argued that the second wave of feminism, women's liberation, emerged from the
left in the late '60s and was located firmly on the left. While not contesting
feminism's left origins, this paper examines the impact of the successes of
feminism as a political movement within a climate that has shifted to the right.
It argues that neo-liberal policies and the growth of fundamentalist religious
groups, along with the collapse of the former socialist states in Europe and
the USSR have created a climate in which the movement, intellectually and organizationally,
has moved in a rightward direction. Central to the intellectual shift is the
conception of the identity 'woman' based on polarized difference. Such a view
has both unified and divided feminism. The content of the politics of difference
has combined with the political attacks and ideological content used by the
forces hostile to feminism. This has organizational consequences for feminism.
It has combined ideological similarity with the consequences of material and
personal insecurity flowing from the policies advocated on the basis of the
feminist analysis of the family. Gains made opening alternatives for women from
the pressures of the family have backfired when many women confront the insecurities
generated by the shift to market driven economic rationalism. Feminism is portrayed
as the cause of such insecurity in attacking the apparent 'security' of the
past. At the same time the very success of feminism in overcoming many of the
barriers to access to equality for some, has obscured the ongoing nature of
inequality faced by the majority of women.
Email: pab@management.canberra.edu.au
Tahnya Barnett Donaghy, Hawke Institute, University of
South Australia
Equality mainstreaming: Lesson learning from Northern Ireland
Mainstreaming has been hailed as the new wonder-drug of equal opportunities.
In the last decade gender mainstreaming has received support and endorsement
from the United Nations, European Union and Council of Europe, Commonwealth
Secretariat, and many governments world-wide and has been _proselytised_ by
organisations such as the World Bank, the ILO, and the OECD. At a time when
both practitioners and academics are calling for a greater understanding and
research on mainstreaming this paper develops both a practical case study and
explores some of the deeper conceptual understandings of mainstreaming models,
through the analysis of the Northern Ireland mainstreaming equality approach.
Recently Northern Ireland, a region not traditionally associate with equality
developments, has emerged as one of the world leaders in mainstreaming equality
policy. The policy involves a statutory duty on all public authorities to give
due regard to the promotion of equality of opportunity on nine different counts
(gender, marital status, dependant status, age, sexual orientation, disability,
race, religion and political opinion). Through the Northern Ireland Act 1998
a number of detailed requirements of public authorities are specified in relation
to this duty, and its implementation is overseen by a rigorous and committed
Equality Commission. This paper explores the development, breadth and depth
of this model. It charts its emergence in relation to local political developments,
and preliminary conclusions are drawn regarding the strengths and weakness of
this unique approach. The paper then provides a theoretical analysis of the
methods employed, contributing the conceptual understandings of mainstreaming
models and offering a new dimension to the understanding their development and
application. As Australia has been identified as a country in which early mainstreamed
advancements were made, and later co-opted and manipulated, this paper will
provide an interesting insight into a case study in which Australia could draw
and learn from.
Email: tahnya.donaghy@unisa.edu.au
This site maintained by Phil Griffiths. This page updated 2 September 2002